Basil Everman

man who looked older than she was in the black silk dress and bonnet with strings which was the church- and party-going

swered, "I'm coming!" she returned to her room, without exp

ation and "service" which was to be loudly proclaimed by the next generation. Even games with other colleges were as yet unheard of; the students were still kept at their books and it was expected of them that they learn their lessons. Each was required to deliver an oration on Commencement Day, t

ed and the houses were plainly built of red brick with noble white pillars. The young people gathered in the twilight and talked and sang; occasionally a group of students lifted their voices in Integer Vit? or "There's Music

en, the village physician, met many times in the long vacation and talked about Grant and Sherman and Lee. Dr. Lister had served a brief term at the end of the war; Dr. Scott ha

ho belonged to no fraternities, and who cared nothing apparently for girls. His companions knew, however, that he was not always silent. He burst occasionally into fierce and eloquent harangues, condemning and scorning those who wasted their time in idleness or love-making. His successful efforts to educate himself gave him an air of authority. The students knew also that he went now and then, a

ng from his practice, and offering the good-will of his business for sale. He had hoped that Dr. Everman would recommend him and that others would remember him. When he heard that Dr. Everman had died, he expressed to Mrs. Lister so hearty an admiration for her imposing and l

her. The servants were negroes who lived in low, neat cabins along a grassy lane which bounded the town on its eastern side. Waltonville had never been a slave-holding community, but some of the older ne

ted Mr. Underwood, the storekeeper, but did not invite him to dinner, and Mrs. Unde

rman, and had descended to his son-in-law and successor. It was a broad, pleasant house with high ceilings and with woodwork of solid oak. One side of t

tic in which stood the reservoir which held the supply of water for the house. As a little girl, she had come with her two companions, her brother Basil and Thomasina Davis, to steal short peeps at the tank in which they could easily have been

in pain under the strong fingers of youth; in the treble they sounded a light cackle, half childish, half senile, like the laughter of an old man. The piano, bought years ago for Basil, resembled an old man in many ways; its teeth were yellow, it creaked as though rheumatism had taken a permanent abode in its joints, and it was swathed in a covering of warm red felt. Though it was the only object in Mrs. Lister's hous

piano stool or had closed the square lid over

, mo

o avoid. But she did not escape the bear's hug with which he grasped her. He was a tal

Yes, mother!

on my bed, and you must chang

Richard took the tie from his mother's hand and stationed himself before the glass in her bedroom, where the walnut furniture was heaviest and most elab

your speech tho

, oh,

always frightened when I had to say a pi

-hearted. Morituri te salutamus, that

going to say

est,' etc. Wouldn't old Jehu skin me alive if I failed? It is bad enough that Eleanor Bent is ahead of me, of me, if you please-faculty family and all that. Now, good-bye, mother. Have a little more faith in

not tired, being a person of almost inexhaustible vigor. The house was in perfect order, 'Manda was singing in the kitchen, and she had a short breathing space. She loved those moments i

ch she called "Baltimer"-in the fall and again in the spring, after having made detailed, dignified, and long-announced plans, and there, with the aid of a commissionnaire, made her purchases for six months. She enjoyed these

omen queer, abnormal, sometimes even wicked. It was connected in her mind with a quality called "genius" which animated the minds of poets and musicians and artists and made them a little more than human and at the same time a good deal less. It was a general conviction among quiet people of the time that those who could w

ce done, she lived alone in the homestead set back in the garden on the street which led to the college. While she condemned Thomasina, Mrs. Lister remembered with a stirring of the heart all the hundreds of times she had pressed her latch. Thomasina had three pupils; Cora Scott, who attained technical correctness; Eleano

l it; that is the way and the only way

rror thou

fest heart; and

ardor, else

arned to feel, t

o go away for a few years for further study, he would come back to teach in the college and would perhaps some day be its president, like his father and grandfather. Then she could stay on in the house wh

was another love, stronger almost than that for husband and son, because its object needed no lo

a scholar; of her mother who seemed to her dim recollection very different from, but who was, nevertheless, very much like herself; and most of all of her brother Basil, for whom she had the rare and passio

girls gathering for the procession; she knew that it was time for her to go, but she could not move. How lon

e phase in which one feels that seeking, importuning, one must find. Basil was here; his wide, bright gaze sought her eyes, as she often fancied, with reproach. All dead persons seemed to Mrs. Lister to look like that; her father did, as she remembered some little s

still more subtly an odor of tobacco, not approved of in the Lister house; here were his pens and pencils and his books, shabby little editions of Greek plays, lined and annotated, which he carried

ght come to know about him, that things might be "found out," was laid. She, too, must forget him; that was the only way to live. Dr. Lister had said, many years ago, that Basil's belongings should be destroyed; that this was the first step toward her recovery. But Dr. Lister spoke of him no more and to Richard he was a