TWO:[Pg 139]

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TWO:Frank asked why it was the whale "spouted," or blew up, the column of spray. Captain Spofford explained that the whale is not, properly speaking, a fish, but an animal. "He has warm blood, like a cow or horse," said the Captain, "and he must come to the surface to breathe. He takes a certain amount of water into his lungs along with the air, and when he throws it out, it makes the spray you have seen, and which the sailors call a spout."CHANGE FOR A DOLLAR--BEFORE AND AFTER. CHANGE FOR A DOLLAR��BEFORE AND AFTER.

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ONE: "The star-spangled banner! O, long may it wave!--"

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ONE:It was but a few months ago that Mr Keeling, taking advantage of a break in the lease of his own house, and the undoubted bargain that he had secured in this more spacious residence, had bought the freehold of ��The Cedars,�� and had given the furnishing and embellishment of it (naming the total sum not to be exceeded) into the hands of his wife and the head of the furnishing department in his stores. The Gothic porch, already there, had suggested a ��scheme�� to the artistic Mr Bowman, and from it you walked into a large square hall of an amazing kind. On the floor were red encaustic tiles with blue fleurs-de-lis, and the walls and ceiling were covered with the most expensive and deeply-moulded Lincrusta-Walton paper of Tudor design with alternate crowns and portcullises. It was clearly inconvenient that visitors should be able to look in through the window that opened on the ��carriage-sweep��; so Mr Bowman had arranged that it should not open at all, but be filled with sham{15} bottle-bottoms impervious to the eye. In front of it stood a large pitch-pine table to hold the clothings and impedimenta of out-of-doors, and on each side of it were chairs of Gothic design. The fireplace, also new, had modern Dutch tiles in it, and a high battlemented mantel-shelf, with turrets at the corners. For hats there was a mahogany hat-rack with chamois-horns tipped with brass instead of pegs, and on the Lincrusta-Walton walls were trophies of spears and battle-axes and swords. Mr Bowman would have left the hall thus in classic severity, but his partner in decoration here intervened, and insisted on its being made more home-like. To secure this she added a second table on which stood a small stuffed crocodile rampant holding in his outstretched forelegs a copper tray for visitors�� calling cards. Mrs Keeling was very much pleased with this, considering it so quaint, and when her friends called, it often served as the header-board from which they leaped into the sea of conversation. The grate of the fire-place, empty of fuel, in this midsummer weather, was filled with multitudinous strips of polychromatic paper with gilt threads among it, which streamed from some fixed point up in the chimney, and suggested that a lady with a skirt covered with ribbons had stuck in the chimney, her head and body being invisible. By the fireplace Mrs Keeling had placed a painted wheelbarrow with a gilt spade, containing fuchsias in{16} pots, and among the trophies of arms had inserted various Polynesian aprons of shells and leather thongs brought back by her father from his voyages; these the outraged Mr Bowman sarcastically allowed ��added colour�� about which there was no doubt whatever. Beyond this hall lay a farther inner one, out of which ascended the main staircase furnished (here again could be traced Mr Bowman��s chaste finger) with a grandfather��s clock, and reproductions of cane-backed Jacobean chairs. From this opened a big drawing-room giving on the lawn at the back, and communicating at one end with Mrs Keeling��s ��boudoir.�� These rooms, as being more exclusively feminine, were inspired in the matter of their decoration by Mrs Keeling��s unaided taste; about them nothing need be said beyond the fact that it would take any one a considerable time to ascertain whether they contained a greater number of mirrors framed in plush and painted with lilies, or of draped pictures standing at angles on easels. Saddlebag chairs, damask curtains, Landseer prints, and a Brussels carpet were the chief characteristics of the dining-room.The empty sparsely-lit streets streamed by him, and it seemed that the earth seemed to be swiftly spinning below him; he just marked time as it turned. The night-wind of spring both cooled and intoxicated him, he felt surer and surer of the success of his errand as he went, and at the same time practical considerations occurred to him. Her brother would be in the house; it was still not late, and probably they would be together. Charles understood enough, so she had told him, to make him sanction her departure; now, when Keeling had seen her, he would understand more. Charles perhaps would open the door to him, for their two servants would have gone to bed, or be{322} out for Saturday night, and Keeling would say to him, ��I must see your sister.�� That was what he would say; and Charles, understanding enough, would see the justice of that demand of love.

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THANKS FOR VISITING US

As the quartermaster lifted out a pair of brogans as broad as they were long, there came a cry of protestation from the freight-car group, that brought the entire herd of rustics from the woodpile and the locomotive. Miss Harper rose behind her nieces, tall, slender, dark, with keen black eyes as kind as they were penetrating. "My boy!" she cried, "you cannot wear those things!"

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Mrs. Flack held the greater part of herself in a semicircle of red arm. "You are a one," she declared. Then she looked at Mr. Flack, who sat unmoved. "Why don't you laugh. It would do you good. You take everything so serious."

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