The Christmas Quarrel

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

 

THEIR CHRISTMAS
QUARREL

By MRS. BELLOC LOWNDES

ILLUSTRATED BY FRANK WILES

THE door of the boudoir opened. The Duke came in. The Duchess ran forward to meet him and threw herself with a dramatic gesture into his arms.

Neither of them noticed that their youngest child, still known, to her annoyance, as "Lady Baby," though she was nine years old, was crouching on the floor by the window, reading, in the gathering twilight, an exciting boy's book.

"Why, what's the matter?" The Duke looked, he felt, alarmed.

"Everything's the matter! Listen to this!" and the Duchess smoothed out a piece of writing-paper crumpled up in her hand.

"Armitage Place.
"Tuesday.

"Dear Duchess,—

"Although he is not aware of it, I am writing to you on behalf of my unfortunate son. Your daughter has not spoken to him for twenty-four hours. The cause of their disagreement is her obstinate determination that their dear little baby should be christened by a very curious and most undesirable name.

"Speaking without prejudice, I consider that in this matter my son is wholly blameless. It is Lettice who is being most unreasonable. I have been wondering if you would write and point out to her that, as a wife, her duty is to obey her husband in this, as in all other things.

"Yours sincerely,
"Catherine Armitage.

P.S.—Not only is Christmas a time of Peace and Goodwill, but within less than a fortnight occurs the first anniversary of their wedding day."

"Twenty-four hours without saying a word? Very amazing on the part of her mother's daughter!" exclaimed the Duke, putting his arm round the Duchess's shoulder. "I can't remember your ever keeping silent for more than half an hour—however angry you were with me. And I think that only happened once, eh, my darling?"

"You never deserved more than thirty minutes' loss of my exciting conversation! But do let's be serious, James. It was very foolish of us to consent to their living with Gerald's mother, even for only part of the year. I don't know how to answer such a letter! It's so much easier to speak than to write——"

There rose from the floor a still small voice: "When you do see her, mother, do hand her the frozen mitt."

"The frozen mitt," said the Duchess gently, "never did anybody any good."

"As to that," said the Duke dryly, "opinions may differ. Just show me that letter."

He glanced over the two closely written sheets of note-paper. "The baby's name? What an extraordinary thing! I thought the child was to be called after you?"

"Laura is only to be her second name. The poor little thing's first name is to be——"

The Duchess did not end her sentence. Instead she said, "Lettice has a fancy for something she thinks romantic, and she has set her heart on——" and she stopped again.

"Yes?" The Duke really wanted to know.

"I'll give you a lead. Try to remember the most devoted, unselfish wife ever met within a play—one who did something very wonderful for the sake of her husband!"

"Lady Macbeth?" queried the Duke.

"Think again! Alcestis, of course—the heroine of the play the children acted when we had that wonderfully clever governess, Miss Fearsome——"

"Alcestis? What an extraordinary name to give a baby. Still, I don't see why Lettice shouldn't do as she likes."

"You are not Gerald's mother," said the Duchess shortly. "She objects strongly to Alcestis. She thinks it pagan——"

"So it is," said the Duke; "Lettice can't deny that."

Again a shrill voice rose from the floor near the window: "Is Lettice sticking up for herself at last? Oh, mother, what fun!"

"Not fun at all," said the Duchess severely. "It's a very foolish notion—and quite unlike our Lettice. She was always so reasonable—before she married."

"She proved how unreasonable she was when she fell in love with that pompous, argufying prig," observed the Duke.

"Gerald has many good points, James." The Duchess was a very loyal mother. "Still, he ought to take Lettice's part."

"'My wife, right or wrong!' ought to be every husband's motto, eh?" exclaimed the Duke.

"It's always been yours, darling," cried the Duchess, and she took hold of the Duke's hand and squeezed it.

"If Lettice is posing as an expert on the Greek drama I commend to her notice the Mask which was known to Pollux as 'The Entirely Good Young Man,'" chuckled the Duke, "and I wish her joy of her own specimen!"

"I think poor Gerald is a little afraid of his mother," said the Duchess gently. "I know I am."

"What d'you propose to do about this silly business?" grunted the Duke; and again he glanced over the letter written by his son-in-law's mother.

"I think the only thing to do is for me to go there to-morrow—and take them all by surprise. I can say what indeed is true, that I have to see old Aunt Lolly. It's on the way, and as she is over ninety I always feel anxious about her——"

"I wish I had half her complaint," interjected the Duke.

"—and I'll engage rooms at the Station Hotel, so as to be able to see Lettice alone, and comfortably," concluded the Duchess.

"You will be making a mistake, my dearest! Far better let them fight it out alone. Remember the French advice as to married folk: 'Between the tree and the bark do not thrust thy finger'—eh?"

"The finger of Lettice's mother-in-law is already there," objected the Duchess sorely.

"Then do as you like! You're generally right. Though it's a shame you should be worried over such a stupid, piffling little quarrel as this seems to be——" And the Duke kissed the Duchess again.

"I always believed," she said plaintively, "that once a girl married, she gave her people no more trouble. I'm sure I never gave dear grandmamma a moment's thought after I'd married you!"

"Your grandmother lived, let me see, quite a hundred miles from anywhere, and——"

"—she fussed far more over her garden than she did over us," the Duchess completed his sentence for him.

"Thus showing her sound sense," amended the Duke.

II.

Twenty-four hours later the Duchess stood in the middle of the stiffly furnished, mid-Victorian-looking drawing-room of Armitage Place. The house had been built when the now large Midland manufacturing centre was a small country town, and it retained something of its peaceful old-world charm.

The unbidden guest felt what she had hardly ever felt in her life before, that is, rather foolish, as well as shy and nervous. Mrs. Armitage alone was at home, for the elderly parlourmaid had explained that "her ladyship" and "Miss Baby" had gone out for an airing, and that "Mr. Gerald" had a meeting this afternoon, and would not be back till after tea.

Now, till a very short time before her baby had been born. Lady Lettice, with the full disapproval of her mother-in-law, had always been present at all her husband's meetings.

The Duchess remembered sadly, now, how doubtful she had felt when she had first been told that during each Parliamentary recess the young couple intended to live with Gerald Armitage's mother. But her daughter had been so eager, as well as so willing, to do everything that her dear Gerald thought right, and as, after all, this town formed part of his constituency, the arrangement seemed more reasonable than such arrangements generally are. Also, Armitage Place was a spacious house; there had been plenty of room in it for three grown-up people, and even for a probable nursery. Till now the arrangement had worked well—on the whole.

The visitor began moving about the low-ceilinged square sitting-room. It looked, it felt, as if nothing had been disturbed in it for at least fifty years. In the centre of the apartment stood a round mahogany table, on which were arranged, in symmetrical order, a few handsomely bound books which were obviously there for show, and not for reading. But, to the Duchess's surprise, across two of these volumes lay now a shabby dictionary.

At last she walked across to the half-moon-shaped window, and, as she looked out at the now wintry walled garden, she told herself that this, her son-in-law's birth-place, was not lacking in dignity, and even in old-world charm. Even so, she felt it strange, as well as not altogether fortunate, that her clever, self-willed, high-spirited daughter should have cast in her lot with the man to whom this house was home, however good and worthy he might be. But the girl had made her bed, and now she must be helped to lie on it.

Already Armitage Place, to the woman who stood gazing into the walled garden, had become a house of memories. She found herself living again through the hours of anxiety and suspense which had brought her and her son-in-law, only five short weeks ago, far nearer the one to the other than they had ever been. She recalled the young man's pathetic joy and relief when at last the two of them, in this very room, had heard that the longed-for baby had at last arrived.

Illustration: "The Duchess ran forward to meet him and threw herself with a dramatic gesture into his arms."

The real mistress of the house, Mrs. Armitage, had gone on a visit to a friend, so as to be absent at the time of the great event, a kind and tactful action on her part, as the Duchess now reminded herself.

How amazing that within five weeks of that wonderful day—the day of their first child's birth—the young father and mother of the baby should be—unless, indeed, they had already made it up—not on speaking terms the one with the other!

The tears welled up in the Duchess's eyes, but she quickly dashed them away as the door opened and Mrs. Armitage, still dressed in a modified form of widow's weeds, though her husband had been dead many a long year, came into the room.

The visitor turned round. She tried to smile, but there was that on Mrs. Armitage's face—a look of settled gloom and of surprised displeasure—which made the Duchess, for the first time in her life, feel a sudden fierce wish to follow her little girl's advice, and hand a fellow-being the frozen mitt!

But she restrained that foolish—she humbly reminded herself most unchristian—impulse; and the two women, so different the one from the other, even in age, for Gerald had been the only child of a couple well on in years, shook hands with a fair show of cordiality.

Then the Duchess's hostess exclaimed in a low suppressed voice, "I'm glad you have come! I'm very glad you have come, Duchess—though I doubt if Gerald's wife will be pleased——"

The Duchess was not a tall woman, but she drew herself up, and for a moment she looked imposing.

"I think there that you are wrong, Mrs. Armitage. I cannot imagine any circumstances in which Lettice would not be glad to see her mother."

The other said stiffly, "I didn't really mean what I said—and you must forgive me if I seem to speak unkindly of Lettice. But I am very unhappy, indeed anxious, on my poor son's behalf."

She paused, then went on in a bitter monologue, "Lettice now declares that rather than not give her little daughter that absurd name she will not have the child christened at all! I persuaded her, with difficulty, to see Canon Barryfield, a most kind and venerable man, who married my dear husband and myself, and who was to have christened baby. She considers that the mother has a right to choose a girl's name, and the father a boy's. And now it's come to this! She refuses to discuss the matter with Gerald, and I'm the only means of communication between herself and my poor son, though of course she says 'yes' and 'no' to him before the servants. But this morning——" Mrs. Armitage broke off abruptly.

"What happened this morning?"

The Duchess knew by the speaker's face that something really serious was coming.

"Lettice told me this morning, quite quietly, as if it was the most ordinary thing in the world, that she and Gerald, before they married, had agreed to separate if there came a day when they no longer loved one another," ended Gerald's mother in a hollow tone.

"I'm sure that was Gerald's notion," flashed out the Duchess. And then she unfortunately added, "Is it likely that an innocent girl of nineteen brought up in a happy old-fashioned home would have thought of suggesting such a horrible idea as that they would ever leave off loving one another?"

"Do you mean to imply, Duchess, that my son was not brought up in a happy old-fashioned home?" inquired Mrs. Armitage in a frigid tone.

The Duchess saw her mistake, and made up her mind that this was indeed no case for the frozen mitt! So, instead of answering the other's indignant question, she exclaimed, "I'm far more grieved than I can say that my foolish little girl is behaving like this——"

A slight look of surprise crossed Mrs. Armitage's pale face. She even thawed a little. "I thought that you would end by feeling sorry for Gerald," she said quietly. Then she added, not very graciously, "Won't you sit down?"

The Duchess walked across to the fire-place; she sat down, and put out her hands to the blaze. She felt cold and shivery, and far more distressed than she desired to show.

But Mrs. Armitage still had a quiverful of barbed arrows ready to let fly.

"Lettice has been brought up in a very different way from anything we understand in this part of the world," she said harshly. "I always thought Gerald's and her marriage a mistake."

How the Duchess longed to say that she, too, had thought it a mistake—a terrible mistake! But she remained silent, while the older woman went on pitilessly, "Lettice told me yesterday that the Duke always does everything you want. She even added—which I did not think a very daughterly thing to say, Duchess—that the Duke even does things that he knows to be quite unreasonable, almost wrong in fact, if you wish them done."

"The Duke," and this time the Duchess again drew herself up, "never does anything that he thinks unreasonable or wrong, and I should not dare to ask him to do so."

As the other said nothing, she added in a trembling tone, "But no doubt from the point of view of our children, he is too kind to me."

She felt so hurt, in a sense so surprised, that she found it hard to keep her self-control.

Then she remembered how completely her husband trusted her—how movingly sure he always was that she would do the wise thing. She recalled the Duke's words, "I should leave them to fight it out!" But he had not opposed her coming here—as she had so foolishly determined to do—to be insulted by the woman she now described to herself as her detestable son-in-law's hard-natured, odious mother. Still, as she had come, she felt that she must wave the olive branch. So it was in a conciliatory tone that she exclaimed, "This business of the darling little baby's name does boil down to very little, doesn't it, Mrs. Armitage? We must put our heads together, you and I, and see what can be done!"

"Boil down to very little?" "Put our heads together?" Mrs. Armitage was surprised, and indeed a little disquieted, by these expressions. She regarded them both as common and vulgar, and she herself would never have made use of such terms under any circumstances. But, as she bitterly put it to herself, and with a very human want of logic, "all is not gold that glitters," and she recalled, with satisfaction, that the fact of a woman being a Duchess does not make her into what Mrs. Armitage believed herself to be, that is, a lady.

"Do you know what sort of person Alcestis was?" she asked. And there was a very unpleasant edge to the still voice.

"I know she died for the sake of her husband," answered the other hesitatingly. "Still, I was very much surprised when Lettice wrote and told me that my granddaughter——" And as the Duchess uttered the word "granddaughter," a word which, as Mrs. Armitage said sorely to herself, sounded almost absurd coming from the lips of such a young-looking woman—Gerald Armitage burst into the room.

He came forward, grasped the Duchess's hands, bent down and—kissed her. "How delightful to see you!" he exclaimed. "Lettice will be pleased."

Then he was glad she had come? Her generous heart melted. She remembered the last time Gerald had kissed her; how they had both clung together for a moment before she pushed him out of this very room so that he might be the first to see Lettice and—his baby.

But a stony voice cut across these, to her, sacred memories.

"Gerald? I have been telling the Duchess something of what has been going on here these last few days. Will you please tell her that you, too, very much object to your child being called by such a queer, pagan name?"

As the young man's face shadowed, she went on, "Read to the Duchess what that dictionary says about Alcestis."

"Surely it's not necessary to do that?" he exclaimed, with a touch of sharp irritation.

"I think it is necessary," replied his mother firmly.

She stepped forward and took up the large dictionary which lay so oddly and so incongruously prominent on the round table which stood in the centre of the room.

The volume fell open at a certain page as Mrs. Armitage put it into her son's hands. "I would have read it before you came in, she observed, "but, unfortunately, I had left my spectacles upstairs."

The young man cleared his throat, and read out, in a solemn voice:

"Alcestis was the daughter of Pelias, son of Poseidon, Admetus, King of Pheræ, sought her in marriage. Pelias consented, provided Admetus fetched her in a chariot drawn by lions and boars——"

He paused, and his mother exclaimed, "Did you ever hear of anything more ridiculous!"

Gerald went on:

"Admetus, who had been kind to Apollo, when that deity was sojourning on earth as an exile from heaven, wished to live for ever. This Apollo ensured for him by arranging with the Fates that Admetus should be immune from death if someone consented to die instead of him. Neither of his parents being willing to make this sacrifice, Alcestis voluntarily gave her own life as substitute for his, on condition that, for their children's sake, he would take no other wife.

"According to the most distinguished of modern critics of Euripides's great drama on this theme, Alcestis is far more mother than wife. To be fatherless would be the greatest misfortune which could befall her children, and so, for their sake, Alcestis was willing to die instead of her husband. She was, however, ultimately brought back from the realms of death by Hercules."

"Lettice once played the part of Alcestis in a version of the famous Greek play which was acted by my children, together with some of their young friends, under the direction of a very learned governess we then had," observed the Duchess mildly. "I wonder if you remember Milton's moving allusion to Alcestis?"

"No, I do not," snapped out Mrs. Armitage.

The Duchess turned to her son-in-law: "I expect you know it, Gerald?

"... my late espoused saint
Brought to me, like Alcestis, from the grave.'"

"That is no reason for giving an English child a pagan Greek name," said Mrs. Armitage sharply.

"Even so, Alcestis is a name which I hope you will very often hear, mother," observed her son, laying the big dictionary back on to the round table.

In a defiant tone he added, "I have made up my mind to consent to my wife's wish in the matter."

The Duchess caught hold of his hand and gave it a squeeze. "That is kind, nay noble, of you!" she cried.

"It's not kind or noble; it's culpable weakness; and most cruel to his poor innocent little daughter," exclaimed Mrs. Armitage with energy. As the young man remained silent, "Have you yet told your wife that you mean to give in to this utterly unreasonable and indeed wickedly selfish desire of hers?" she asked, in a tone of suppressed anger. "If so, I suppose it's waste of breath to try and show you how wrongly you are acting?"

"I have not told her yet," he said in a low voice. "As a matter of fact, I came in intending to tell her now."

Then the Duchess intervened. "I still think it's most good and generous of you to think of giving in," she said earnestly. "But I agree with your mother as to the name being quite unsuited to an English girl. What you read to me just now reminded me of a boy whose father insisted on naming him Hercules—and who grew up a dwarf! So I hope you will allow me to speak to Lettice before you decide on what is, after all, an important question from the point of view of the one person who really matters—and that is—Baby."

Mrs. Arbuthnot was not in the least moved by the Duchess's suggestion, and, as they all heard the sound of a motor drawing up before the front door, she exclaimed, "One word more! Before the Duchess meets your wife I wish to know, my son, whether it is true, as Lettice asserted to me this morning, that before your marriage you and she entered into an unholy pact that if you did not go on loving one another, you would separate?"

The young man flushed deeply. "Yes," he said slowly, "it is quite true, mother. I have always held that love—not a ceremony only—is essential to true marriage."

"I felt sure that this suggestion did not come from my daughter," observed the Duchess gently.

She felt that Mrs. Armitage did deserve one little pat.

Gerald looked surprised. "Of course it was my suggestion!" he exclaimed. "Lettice was so very young when we became engaged, and, if you will forgive my saying so, she had been brought up in such a very old-fashioned way. I think I may claim to have opened out before her, even then, many wide horizons of thought, though, even now, she does not always think things out to their logical conclusion," he ended pompously.

"Your wicked, as well as extremely silly, idea of what really constitutes marriage, has put a formidable weapon into your wife's hand," said his mother dryly.

"It never occurred to me that in our case love could ever die; and I don't believe it ever will," he said in a low voice, and the Duchess saw that he became, from red, pale.

Then came the question she dreaded. "Does Lettice expect you?" he asked.

And she saw by his look of fear that he thought his wife had sent for her mother to take her away.

"Oh, no," she answered quickly. "I've come here"—and then she hesitated, for she was not a good liar—"because that dear old aunt of mine, whom you and Lettice went over to see soon after you were married—is far from well. I'm on my way there, and I've only broken my journey for a night at the Station Hotel."

"The Station Hotel!" exclaimed the young man in shocked tones. "We've plenty of room here, Duchess," and he looked reproachfully at his mother.

There came the sounds of the front door opening and then shutting, but no Lady Lettice appeared.

"I suppose she thought it better to go straight to her room," said Gerald uncomfortably. "Shall I go and tell her that you are here?"

"You needn't do that. I know the way," and she looked at him with kind eyes.

Followed by his mother's angry glance he opened the door, and then followed the Duchess into the corridor.

"Tell my darling she shall call the baby Alcestis or anything else she likes," he whispered. "I've been horribly unhappy the last few days!"

The Duchess went upstairs, and through the quiet house. Then she knocked on the door of the large old-fashioned bedroom which Mrs. Armitage had given up with quite a good grace to her son's wife.

"Come in!" cried a sharp voice the Duchess hardly recognised for that of her merry, happy-natured daughter.

But when she opened the door, Lettice turned round, and with a cry of "Mother! How wonderful! You here?" ran and threw herself into her mother's arms.

"I didn't feel I could live another day without seeing Baby!" exclaimed the Duchess.

Lady Lettice was far too absorbed in her troubles to challenge this rather peculiar statement. Instead she laughed, and it was not a pleasant laugh.

"The poor little thing's nameless now! Mrs. Armitage and Gerald are both very disappointed that she was not a boy. They're angry with me, and they show it by not being willing to give my child the name I want her to have. Yet Alcestis is a beautiful, as well as an unusual name." She ended in a bitter tone, "And you couldn't find a nobler woman to be called after! One would have thought that Gerald's mother, who still wears mourning for Gerald's father, would have realised that."

"Before I see Baby I should like a word with you about this, Lettice."

"It's no good, mother. I know exactly what you're going to say. I've heard it all. I'm always hearing it, again and again and again from Gerald's mother—to say nothing of all that Gerald himself said to me before I lit on the plan of not answering him."

"You do not know what I am going to say, my dear."

The girl, for she was still only a girl, looked at the Duchess, and a sharp stab of pain shot through her hurt, rebellious heart. She had felt so sure of the love and the sympathy which had never once failed her. This was the first time she had seen this stern, sad expression on her mother's face.

"Well," she said ungraciously, "what is it you want to say to me?"

"Only this," observed the Duchess coldly. "You have won, Lettice, hands down; and I wish you joy of your triumph. Gerald has given in. You are at liberty to call your unfortunate little girl by that peculiar name, and even to have her christened by it—if you can find a clergyman to perform the ceremony. But you will be doing a thing which may easily become cruel by your child, as well as making Gerald cut a sorry figure in his mother's eyes. However, henceforth, when thinking of your henpecked husband, you will always be able to tell yourself, 'A poor thing, but mine own.'"

Before Lettice could answer there came another knock on her bedroom door, and Gerald's voice came through it—eager, imploring, "May I come in?"

"Ye—es, of course you may."

Lettice was sobbing violently now, and as the young man ran forward the Duchess pushed her into his arms and, after shutting the door on them, ran quickly along the corridor and so downstairs, once more, to the drawing-room.

Mrs. Armitage was standing by the fire—there was a terrible expression of jealous anguish, as well as of anger, on her bloodless face. For the first time she felt that she had lost her son. Bitterly she was reminding herself of the cynical old saying. And, as she came up to her, almost could the Duchess see into the other woman's sore heart.

She suddenly remembered her own eldest boy, the darling of her heart, and of how she watched, secretly, every girl, and even more, every alluring widow, who came his way.

"Lettice has given in," she said, in what was almost a whisper. "You must try to forgive her obstinacy over what was after all not a very important matter. She is such a child, really. And I do think"—her voice shook a little, and to herself she said, "May I be forgiven!"—"that she loves Gerald far more than he loves her."

Mrs. Armitage's hard face softened. "I am glad, more glad than I can say, that you have shown Lettice where her duty lies. I do not doubt that she loves my son, but I notice that she always expects him to give way to her wishes. She always wants to have her own way!"

"Don't you think every woman of spirit does that? Surely you don't approve of the doormat type of wife?"

The Duchess was beginning to feel as if her patience was ebbing out.

"I don't approve of the doormat type of husband," answered Mrs. Armitage quickly. And the other felt that Gerald's mother had scored.

She put her soft hand on Mrs. Armitage's hard, stringy wrist.

"Do let us go and see Baby," she suggested. Generously she added, "I'm glad the dear little thing won't have to live up to such a name as Alcestis!"

III.

It was early the next morning; mother and daughter were sitting very close together on the hard sofa of the Duchess's private sitting-room at the Station Hotel.

"You choose the poor little thing's name, mother. I don't care what she's called now! The more commonplace and stupid her name, the better I shall be pleased."

"Lettice! " said her mother severely, "to say that is not playing the game. You're not acting rightly, my dear. You don't realise how very, very fortunate you are to have a husband who loves you as poor Gerald loves you——"

Lettice melted into tears. "Yet he wouldn't let me call my own baby, a girl too, by that beau—beau—ti—ful name? But of course it's all his mother's fault——"

"If I were you," said the Duchess in a grave, thoughtful tone, "I should grasp the nettle firmly, and call the little pet 'Catherine,' after Mrs. Armitage."

"Catherine? Oh, mother!"

"I should indeed. For one thing, it's a beautiful name. The name of a famous saint, the name of a very great empress, and——"

Lady Lettice wiped her eyes. She gave her mother such a funny little look, a look that reminded the Duchess of the Duke.

"Alcestis," she observed, "compared very favourably with that wife and mother!"

"Such a nice old -fashioned name," went on the baby's grandmother placidly, "far better than calling the darling after some stupid flower or vegetable, as now seems to be the fashion——"

"It must have been the fashion when I was born too, mother. Most of the people I know here call me 'Lady Lettuce.' I'm sure some of them think I was called that because you and daddy were so fond of salad!"

Illustration

And then, all at once, Lady Lettice also asked the question her mother feared she would ask.

"What really made you think of coming to see us now?" she said suddenly. "It seems such a little while since you were here—and we are coming to you for Christmas?"

"There had come such a change over your letters, my darling child! You know they used to be a little bit 'Gerald, Gerald, Gerald,' and then they become, well, I can't explain, but not even 'I, I, I.' So I felt that you were in some sort of trouble. Also, I had to see dear old Aunt Lolly—"

"Tell that to—Mrs. Armitage!" murmured her daughter, putting her soft cheek against hers. "I thought I—I feared—that Gerald had written to complain of me. I should never have forgiven him that."

"It was very wrong of you to suspect him of doing such a thing. Poor Gerald! I wish you had heard him taking your part, when I said how very naughty and unreasonable you were showing yourself, dearest."

"Yet at first he was quite pleased with Alcestis! It was only after his mother and that stuffy old Canon Barryfield got at him that he changed."

"Men are like that," the Duchess answered, smiling.

"Father isn't."

The Duchess gave her daughter a quiet look.

"Your father is in a class by himself," she said proudly. Then she observed, thoughtfully, "I think you're very lucky too; I mean in your Gerald, my pet." She nearly added, "I love him now, though I never thought to——" but stopped herself in time.

"We're never going to quarrel again," said the girl softly.

The Duchess murmured just one word—"Piecrust!"

Then she took out of her bag the tiny red russia-leather-bound diary her children always saw her use. From an inner flap she extracted a much-folded piece of faded writing-paper.

"I'm going to show you a note," she said, with a touch of solemnity in her voice, "that your father wrote to me at a time when we hadn't been very long married. We had had a scrap—not as bad as yours and Gerald's, of course—just a teeny-weeny scrap."

"What was it about?" said Lady Lettice eagerly.

The thought that her parents could ever have had a quarrel, even a very little quarrel, filled her with surprise and curiosity.

"It was about some people he didn't want me to know," said the Duchess slowly. "He was much more particular then than he is now. Indeed, if he was as particular now as he was then, well, we should live a desert!"

"Lettice was sobbing violently now."

She laughed merrily, and in that merry laugh her daughter joined. It was the first time that poor little Lady Lettice had laughed a gladsome laugh for—well, quite a long time.

"What happened, mother?" she asked eagerly. "I can't believe that you gave in!"

"As to that," said the Duchess evasively, "I'd rather not remember. I was a naughty, obstinate, always-sure-I-am-right sort of young woman in those days—and your dear, kind father was so fond of me! I'm afraid I sometimes took advantage of that——"

"I don't believe," said Lettice decidedly, "that he was a bit fonder of you than he is now."

"Perhaps it was a different kind of fondness, more jealous and governessy, if you know what I mean, my darling?"

Lady Lettice nodded. She felt a little touched. Queer to think that her father could ever have been even a little like dear Gerald!

The Duchess went on slowly. At any rate, on the afternoon of the day we'd made it up and agreed to differ, he wrote me this little note."

She handed her daughter the faded sheet of old-fashioned late Victorian note-paper on which was written, in the firm, angular handwriting with which the young reader was familiar:

"My dear Love

I think old Cowper must have written these lines with a prophetic eye on us.

"Your devoted husband,
"St. A.

The kindest and the happiest pair
Will find occasion to forbear,
And something every day they live
To pity, and perhaps forgive."

Copyright, 1926, by Paul Reynolds, in the United States of America

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