boots came chirping down the hall in that direction, with a sound of heavy breathing. Helen sprang from her chair, and fled to meet the cheerful sound; there was the noise of an encountering kiss, and a jolly laugh, and "Well, Helen!" and "Oh, Captain Butler!" and later, "Harkness !" and "Butler!" as Helen led the visitor in.
"Well!" said this guest, for the third time. He straightened his tall mass to its full height, and looked out over his chest with eyes of tender regard upon Harkness's thin and refined face, now lit up after the handshaking with cordial welcome. "Do you know," he said, as if somehow it were a curious fact of natural history, "that you have it uncommonly close in here?" He went over to the window that opened upon the little grassy yard, and put it up for himself, while Harkness was explaining that it had been put down while he was napping. Then he planted himself in a large leathern chair beside it, and went on smoking the cigar on the end of which he had been chewing. He started from the chair with violence, coughing and gesturing to forbid Helen, who was hospitably whispering to Margaret. "No, no; don't do it. I won't have anything. I couldn't. I've just dined at the club. Yes, you may do that much," he added to Helen, as she set a little table with an ash-holder at his elbow. "You've no idea what a night it is. It's cooler, and the air's delicious. I say, I want to take Helen back with me. I wish she'd go alone, and leave us two old fellows together here. There's no place like Boston in the summer, after all. But you haven't told me whether you're surprised to see me." Captain Butler looked round at them with something of the difficulty of a sea-turtle in a lateral inspection.
"Never surprised, but always charmed," said Helen, with just the shade of mockery in her tone which she knew suited this visitor.
"Charmed, eh?" asked Captain Butler. Apparently, he meant to say something satirical about the word, but could not think of anything. He turned again to her father: "How are you, Harkness?"
"Oh, I'm very well," said Harkness evasively. "I'm as well as usual."
"Then you have yourself fetched home in a hack by a policeman every day, do you?" remarked Captain Butler, blowing a succession of white rings into the air. "You were seen from the club window. I'll tell you what; you're sticking to it too close."
"O yes, Captain Butler, do get him away," sighed Helen, while her father, who had not sat down, began to walk back and forth in an irritated, restless way.
"For the present I can't leave it," said Harkness, fretfully. He added more graciously: "Perhaps in a week or two, or next month, I can get off for a few days. You know I was one of the securities for Bates and Mather," he said, looking at Captain Butler over Helen's head.
"I had forgotten that," answered Captain Butler gravely.
"They left things in a complete tangle. I can't tell just where I am yet, and, of course, I've no peace till I know."
"Of course," assented Captain Butler. "I won't vex you with retroactive advice, Joshua," he added affectionately, "but I hope you won't do anything of that kind again."
"No, Jack, I won't. But you know under the circumstances it would have been black ingratitude to refuse."
"Yes," said Captain Butler. He smoked a while in silence. Then he said, "I suppose it's no worse with the old trade than with everything else, at present."
"No, we're all in the same boat, I believe," said Harkness.
"How is Marian?" asked Helen, a little restive under the cross firing.
"Oh, Marian's all right. But if she were not, she wouldn't know it."
"I suppose she's very much engaged," said Helen, with a faint pang of something like envy.
"Yes," said Captain Butler. "I thought you were at Rye Beach, young lady."
"I thought you were at Beverley, old gentleman," retorted Helen; she had been saucy to Captain Butler from infancy.
"So I was. But I came up unexpectedly today."
"So did I."
"Did you? Good! Now I'll tell you why J came, and you shall tell me why you did. I came because I got to thinking of your father, and had a fancy I should like to see him. Did you?"
Helen hung her head. "No," she said at length.
The Captain laughed. "Whom had you a fancy to see here, then, at this time of year?"
"Oh, I didn't say I should tell. You made that bargain all yourself," mocked Helen. "But it was very kind of you to come on papa's account," she added softly.
"What are you making there?" asked the Captain, bending forward to look at the work Helen had taken into her lap.
"Who—I ?" she asked, as if she had perhaps been asked what Robert was making. Her mind had been running upon him since Captain Butler asked her why she had come up to Boston. "Oh !" she recovered herself. "Why, this," she said, taking the skeleton framework of gauze and wire on her fingertips, and holding it at arm's-length, with her head aslant surveying it, "this is a bonnet for Margaret."
"A bonnet, hey?" said the Captain. "It looks like a Shaker cap."
"Yes?" Helen clapped it on her head, and looked jauntily at the captain, dropping her shoulders, and putting her chin out. "Now, does it?"
"No, not now. The Shaker sisters don't wear crimps, and they don't smile in that wicked way." Helen laughed, and took the bonnet-frame off. "So you make Margaret's bonnets, do you? Do you make your own?"
"Sometimes. Not often. But I like millinery. It's what I should turn to if I were left to take care of myself."
"I'm afraid you wouldn't find it such fun," said the Captain.
"Oh, milliners make lots of money," returned Helen. "They must. Why, when this bonnet is done, you couldn't get it for ten dollars. Well, the materials don't cost three."
"I wish my girls had your head for business," said the Captain honestly. Helen made him a burlesque obeisance. "Yes, I mean it," he insisted. "You know that I always admired your good sense. I'm always talking it into Marian."
"Better not," said Helen, with a pin between her teeth.
"Why?"
"Because I haven't got it, and it'd make her hate me if I had."
"Do you mean to tell me that you're not a sensible girl ?" inquired the Captain.
Helen nodded, and made "Yes" with her lips, as well as she could with the pin between her teeth. She took it out to say, " You should have seen my performances in my room a little while ago." She was thinking of that rehearsal before the mirror.
"What were they?" asked the Captain.
"Oh, as if I should tell!" Helen bowed herself over the bonnet, and blushed, and laughed. Her father liked to hear the banter between her and his old friend. They both treated her as if she were a child, and she knew it and liked it; she behaved like a child.
"Harkness," said the Captain, turning his fat head half round toward his friend, who sat a little back of him, and breaking off his cigar-ash into the bronze plate at his elbow, "do you know that your remaining in the trade after all the rest of us have gone out of it is something quite monumental?"
