“I thought Higgins was with you,” said Miss Van Meeker Constantia.
“Higgins went out,” explained her father, “and Mrs. Widdup answered the bell. That is better now, Mrs. Widdup, thank you. No; there is nothing else I require.”
The housekeeper retired, pink under the cool, inquiring stare of Miss Coulson.
“This spring weather is lovely, isn’t it, daughter?” said the old man, consciously conscious.
“That’s just it,” replied Miss Van Meeker Constantia Coulson, somewhat obscurely. “When does Mrs. Widdup start on her vacation, papa?”
“I believe she said a week from to-day,” said Mr. Coulson.
Miss Van Meeker Constantia stood for a minute at the window gazing toward the little park, flooded with the mellow afternoon sunlight. With the eye of a botanist she viewed the flowers—most potent weapons of insidious May. With the cool pulses of a virgin of Cologne she withstood the attack of the ethereal mildness. The arrows of the pleasant sunshine fell back, frostbitten, from the cold panoply of her unthrilled bosom. The odour of the flowers waked no soft sentiments in the unexplored recesses of her dormant heart. The chirp of the sparrows gave her a pain. She mocked at May.
But although Miss Coulson was proof against the season, she was keen enough to estimate its power. She knew that elderly men and thick-waisted women jumped as educated fleas in the ridiculous train of May, the
