The Young Person

by Geraldine Bonner

THE YOUNG PERSON

THE prevailing characteristic of Mrs. Murdock's boarding-house was a faded gentility. Both Mrs. Murdock and No. 208 had seen better days. The lady herself, crossing her shining and veinous old hands over her black barege lap, was prone to remind her select company of boarders that she had once been a person of wealth and high standing.

But this was a fact that it was hardly necessary for Mrs. Murdock to verbally announce. One saw it at a glance. That this was a house originally intended for fine people who lived finely, the observant visitor at No. 208 could tell by the dim frescoes on the high ceilings, the long crystal chandeliers and the tall mirrors with great gilt frames. So the same observer could have seen by Mrs. Murdock's condescending dignity of manner, by her mode of expressing herself, and by her well modulated voice, that here was a lady above her fortunes.

After an interview with her, a visit to her sitting-room in the back of the house was all that was needed to convince the most sceptical of the glories of Mrs. Murdock's beginnings. Here, on a great mahogany sideboard, shining and solid, stood out bravely the family silver, all marked with the late Murdock's crest. Here was her book-case full of her father—the Reverend Hiram Deane's—books. Here were the chairs with curved backs of glossy mahogany and horse-hair seats that had been her grandmother's. And to add the last touch of gentle refinement to this lady-like apartment, here, of sunny afternoons, Mrs. Murdock's niece, Elmira Deane, was to be found sitting stiffly upright on one of the horsehair chairs, embroidering sun-flowers on a strip of linen.

Strange to say considering the conventional, one might say Philistine, nature of Mrs. Murdock's boarding-house, its four boarders were all of the literary profession. That Mrs. Murdock herself somewhat looked down upon their sacred calling they none of them denied. That the atmosphere of the house was distinctly discouraging to the fine frenzies of imagination was to be felt by the dullest observer. And yet, so strong was the attraction of 208 for the literary mind, that the last vacancy left by Phenix Byron, who had been sent by Dawson & Company to write up Mexico, had been filled only two hours later by Stafford Connelly, a rising author of the most revolutionary school, of whom his friends said that “he possessed the power of a Zola with the polish of a Maupassant.”

This gifted person had moved into his small apartment at No. 208 at five in the afternoon and at half-past might have been discovered sitting on the corner of his portmanteau, with the few unimportant trifles that comprised his wardrobe scattered about him, and before him, the lid thrown back, the sole-leather trunk that held the precious outpourings of his muse.

The side door of his room communicating with Billy Shenstone's was open, and Billy Shenstone stood in the doorway looking at his friend. Billy Shenstone had brought Connelly to Mrs. Murdock's boarding house. He had said, “it would be better for his style than years of study.” And when Billy Shenstone said such things the world of mute, inglorious Miltons generally listened. For Billy Shenstone was the William Wallace Shenstone whose stories in the magazines are so widely read, and Stafford Connelly, notwithstanding the high hopes entertained of his literary prowess, had not yet found a publisher for his masterpiece, “The Hand of Jezebel,” which was to place his name among the stars.

Even without reading his work one would have been inclined to say that the divine fire burnt in Stafford Connelly. He looked as a genius should look. Warrington in “Pendennis” was one of his heroes, and it was on the plan of Warrington that he modelled himself. Now in direct contrast to the sleek, smug neatness of Shenstone, he sat, unkempt and rugged, in his shirt sleeves and without a collar. He smoked a short briar-wood pipe, his chin was blue and stubby and his heavy dark hair hung in long, slightly curly locks about a fine forehead. Reaching down into the trunk for the manuscript of “The Hand of Jezebel,” he said to his friend.

“Well, what's the charm to the budding genius about this house? Why did you insist on my coming? Is the old lady downstairs the one who is going to lead me by the hand into the temple of fame?”

“No,” said Shenstone, “not the old lady, the young lady.”

“The young lady? I never knew there was a young lady. How young a lady?”

Shenstone screwed up his eyes in meditative reckoning of Miss Deane's age.

“About eighteen—a sweet young girl about eighteen, with a pair of soft blue eyes, and a little red cherry for a mouth, and two round cheeks of a pale pink, and plump white hands with square tips to the fingers, and a passion for embroidering samplers with her back to the light—a charming young girl!”

“Great Powers!” murmured the newcomer, in the horror of the picture dropping “The Hand of Jezebel” on the floor, “How ghastly!”

“Ghastly? Charming! This sweet young thing is here, you will see her blushing like a violet by a mossy stone at dinner to-night. She will be too shy and too well brought up to say more than a word to you, but that will not prevent her from leading you into the Temple of Fame. She has led others before you. We can't get there without her.”

“You fall in love with a woman like that?” cried his friend in loud-voiced scorn.

“Not in the least. We've never thought of such a thing. But she helps us in our work. She guides our feeble steps. She goes before us carrying a light through the dark places.”

“Will you kindly explain to me what you're talking about?”

“Assuredly—listen. You know The Young Person. You know how the editor cherishes her and compiles his magazine, and requests the author to write his book all for her perusal? You know the way we've railed against her, and called down maledictions on her head? And you know the way in the end she conquers us, and we bow before her and acknowledge her supremacy?”

“You may—I never will. Here, by 'The Hand of Jezebel,' I swear to defy The Young Person, as I always have. She is ruining our literature, she is killing our art. She has bound our muse down, and clipped its wings with the little scissors hanging at her girdle, till the poor thing will never fly again. She is the bane of every artist in the country. She has forced us all to be smirking liars. Because of her none of us dare to be true. She has broken the heart of naturalism and chilled the blood of romance. Let me starve in a garret before I cut a paragraph or change a sentence in a mistaken effort to keep her mind as blank as a sheet of white paper.”

“That's the way we all begin by talking. Then, after a year of having our stuff 'returned wtih thanks' we realize what the power of The Young Person is—we begin to see that it's a serious business to declare war against her. She starves us out—mais il faut vivre.”

“And you 've capitulated?”

“Entirely. I am The Young Person's slave and champion. I am one of the most ardent advocates of keeping her mind like a sheet of white paper. I write stories that you might nourish babes upon. And the result?—I have ceased to walk on my uppers.”

“'Just for a handful of silver he left us!' That I should live to see you fall so low!”

“Yes, I know it's heartrending, but I'm coming to Miss Deane. This is the secret of her power—she is The Young Person! There are other types of the species in New York, but there can be no other as perfect as she is. And here, shut away in this old brown-stone front on the East side, Phenix Byron found her blushing unseen and wasting her sweetness on Mrs. Murdock and several, commonplace, illiterate boarders who never held a pen or read a book.”

“And it is her literary judgment that you think would be of such value to me?”

“Precisely—of more value to you than years of study. See what it has done for Phenix Byron and for me! We always read our stuff to her and to Mrs. Murdock. When Mrs. Murdock coughs or sends Elmira up to get her handkerchief we always know that we must strike out the paragraph. At times Elmira expresses herself as somewhat surprised at the forward behavior of our heroine. Elmira is the best brought-up girl in the world, and we immediately subdue the heroine. After a reading to Elmira and her aunt, the MS. being neatly marked with a red cross where Elmira has been sent to get a handkerchief, with a 'B' where she has blushed, with an 'O' where she herself has observed that the heroine did not please her, we know that our work may be submitted with safety to the magazine that is most boastfully 'fitted for perusal in the home circle.' And we are rarely disappointed in the results. I have often thought that Elmira is one of the most perfect examples of The Young Person in the savage state now extant.”

“And this is the influence that was to do more for my style than years of study? Do you suppose in your wretched, mercenary mind that I would cut one sentence from any work of mine, because it would be too strong meat for a green girl? I am not a writer for babes and sucklings. I write for the thinking man and woman.”

“It is not much use writing for the thinking man and woman when they never see it. But still—let that rest. Reserve your judgment till after to-night. This evening I purpose reading my new story to Elmira and Mrs. Murdock. You also may have the supreme felicity of listening, and you will see how necessary a person Elmira Deane is in the world of literature.”

Half-past six was the dinner hour at No. 208, and as the old-fashioned clock chimed its single note, Mrs. Murdock and her boarders gathered round the table. The newcomer, coated and collared now, but with his long locks hanging leonine over his temples, was presented to Mrs. Webster, who did the article on “Woman and Her Fancies” in the Sunday Shield. Mrs. Webster, shaking out her stiff napkin and drawing it up over her shining silk lap to tuck one corner in between the straining buttonholes of her bounteous basque, thrust her head forward and peered at the new arrival under the red lamp-shade, then welcomed him jovially as became a member of the craft. Arthur Bronson, the fourth boarder, sub-editor of the weekly High-Tone, was rarely present at dinner, Mrs. Murdock explained from behind the towering structure of an ancestral tea-urn. Then, as a side-door opened and a slim young figure entered the room, she delayed her task—her shrivelled hands with their shining knuckles and prominent veins hanging suspended over the tea-cups—to say proudly,

“My niece, Miss Deane, Mr. Connelly.”

The young girl sat down at the foot of the table and blushed, and nervously moved her knife and fork with a pair of plump hands. She wore a white dress, fastened round the neck and waist with broad light-blue ribbons. Her face in the lamp-light was as delicately pink as a Duchesse rose, and once, when Stafford Connelly undertook to survey her with a look of moody disapproval, he surprised an investigating glance from a pair of large, china-blue eyes that were as limpidly innocent as the eyes of a peaceful baby.

“Mr. Shenstone,” said Mrs. Murdock, as a neat-handed Phyllis began to pass the viands, “is going to be good enough to read us his new story to-night.”

“What's the name, William?” asked Mrs. Webster, setting her knife and fork down with their tips resting against the sides of her plate, and ducking her head to peer at Shenstone under the lamp's red umbrella.

“I have gone to Shakespeare again—'And I for no woman.' I hope you'll like it; I fancy it's a little bit new.”

“When is Mr. Connelly going to treat us to some of the flights of his muse?” queried Mrs. Webster, turning her merry old eyes on the long-locked revolutionary.

“I'm afraid the flights of my muse would not meet with the approval of the present company,” said Connelly, determining to declare his independence in the very teeth of the Young Person.

At this everybody stared. Mrs. Webster laughed knowingly and wagged her head at him, Mrs. Murdock stopped rattling the tea-cups and fastened upon him the eyes of an aged experience in dubious questioning. But Miss Deane's limpid orbs raised suddenly and dwelling upon him with a look of wide and startled inquiry, were by far the most disconcerting.

“How do you mean?” she asked, her puzzled curiosity overpowered her shyness.

“Elmira, my child,” said Mrs. Murdock in the tone one might imagine Cornelia using to the Gracchi, “Please tell Delia to bring back that stewed celery.”

After dinner, Shenstone, with a lamp beside him, settled himself in one of the horse-hair chairs, and, facing his audience, began to read the new story. It was a romantic love-tale, in which a proud and penniless hero was beloved by a wealthy and tenderly adoring heroine. It seemed to interest the four listeners, especially Elmira, who soon let her work drop in her lap, and sat absorbed with her eyes upon Shenstone's forehead shining above the manuscript. When, however, toward the middle of the tale, the hero, in a moonlit moment of farewell, pressed a light and tender kiss upon the heroine's cheek, Elmira's gaze was suddenly lowered and she resorted to her sun-flowers, gently blushing.

Mrs. Webster coughed. Shenstone looked over the top of his manuscript, paused, felt in his pocket, and drawing out a pencil made a mark on the margin of the page. But later on, when the hero determined to bid the heroine an eternal farewell and she, overwhelmed by the horror of the thought, threw bashfulness and maidenly reserve to the winds and, in broken accents, confessed her love, consternation was visible on Mrs. Murdock's aged countenance and her deep voice suddenly cut into the palpitating scene.—

“Elmira, please, dear, go to my room and bring me my glasses which you will find either on the mantel, or the bureau, or the shelf under your Uncle Josiah's portrait.”

“Yes, Auntie,” said Elmira, folded up her work and withdrew.

“What's the matter with that?” asked Mrs. Webster as soon as Elmira was outside the door. Shenstone had put his manuscript down on the table and was marking vigorously with his red pencil.

“I cannot allow Elmira to hear such things. No self-respecting woman would ever speak to any man in that manner. No—no—that scene must be changed before I can allow Elmira to hear it. The man must propose to the woman, and she may modestly accept.”

Shenstone, who had stopped marking, read over his mutilated manuscript and groaned feebly.

“It will be as flat as last night's beer,” protested Mrs. Webster.

Mrs. Murdock did not approve of this comparison and said stiffly.

“We must consider the mind of youth. Elmira cannot hear that story in its present form. If Mr. Shenstone cares about her hearing it he must change it.”

“It shall be changed,” said Shenstone, with the air of a hero and a martyr.

During the week that followed, each morning while he dressed, Stafford Connelly announced to his friend his intention of quitting No. 208 and seeking more congenial quarters. At night, however, after a good dinner—for Mrs. Murdock's cuisine was capital—he seemed more reconciled to his Philistine environment, and there were times when he went so far as to commend Mrs. Murdock's antique graces, and now and then even spent the half-hour after dinners conversing with Miss Deane.

This young lady, grown accustomed to his leonine style, was quite talkative, and with her round and dimpled face bent over her long piece of embroidery, prattled gaily while he sat and stared at her with the interest of the writer for the new type.

“That girl is very extraordinary,” he said to his friend upstairs in their rooms. “Do you think she's deficient in mind?”

“Elmira?” shouted Shenstone. “Great powers, no! Her little skull is as full of mind as an egg is of meat. But she's The Young Person, that's all. When Elmira surprises you just think of that, then nothing about her will ever surprise you again.”

“I cannot imagine any one writing a story that would appeal to her unless it was about dolls and a sampler.”

“Elmira likes love,” said Shenstone, meditatively “Love's young dream. And when you can write a love story that Elmira will like your fortune will be made. Editors will dog your footsteps.”

A short time after this conversation, Connelly, coming in early from a visit to the great newspaper which occasionally condescended to print his shorter stories, met Elmira on the door steps coming in too. In the dim hallway, with a softened, rosy light filtering through the thin red silk curtains drawn over the hall-door windows, they stood and talked. Elmira looked very pretty in her new fawn-colored cloth coat, with a brown felt hat, dinted down the middle, on her smooth braids, and her round chin resting on the little brown fur animal that was hooked about her neck. No one would ever suppose that Elmira lived in an East side boarding-house, affected by authors. She had an air of conventional stylishness that made her look like one of those splendid young ladies who walk so briskly up Fifth avenue of sunny afternoons.

“Why do n't you ever read us any of your stories, Mr. Connelly?” she asked, putting her muff under her arm and pulling off her thick dog-skin gloves. Connelly admired the soft, white hand that slipped so easily out of the loose glove. His eyes were fixed on it as he said:

“Oh, I don't want to bore you.”

“I don't think you 'll bore us,” said Elmira politely, but without conviction, 'and I'd like to hear one.”

“I haven't got one that I'd like to read you,” he said, looking into her clear eyes.

“Well, then, write one,” said Elmira imperiously. “All the authors that have lived here have read us their stories, and so must you.”

“What would you like me to write one about?” queried the revolutionary, suppressing a smile.

Elmira drooped her head to one side in meditation. Her thick, white eyelids were lowered, the curve of her healthy young cheek was pink as the lips of a sea-shell.

“I like love,” she said slowly, “but auntie prefers studies of character. Mrs. Webster says all Auntie wants in a story to have a moral lesson at the end. You could write a love story for me, and squeeze in the moral lesson for Auntie, could n't you?'

“If you really would like a story, I might try,” said Stafford Connelly meekly.

That night Shenstone, who was a gentleman of social engagements, did not get in till late. The house was dark as he crept upstairs, but from under Connelly's door a thread of light shone, cutting the darkness. Opening the door between the two rooms he saw the disciple of the realistic school, in the comfort of an aged dressing gown, seated at his writing table pondering over various papers, while the smoke lay about his head in motionless layers.

“Is this an attack of the Divine Afflatus?” Shenstone asked.

Connelly started and looked darkly over his shoulder.

“Oh, is that you?” he said with affected indifference. “That girl down stairs is determined that I must write her a love-story, and I am wrestling with the muse.”

“It will be capital practice,” said Shenstone, “capital. You're beginning to see how useful Elmira Deane is in the world of literature.”

“Useful! Ornamental I'll admit. But to have to waste my time this way! 'To have to spend so many days concocting a story for that child! It's cruel.”

“Then don't write it.”

“Oh, I'll have to. I promised her I would. She expects it. I may loathe her influence on art, but I can't disappoint her.”

His friend drew back his head and shut the door. He thought pleasantly that the spell of No. 208 was already at work on the recalcitrant Stafford Connelly and great things might follow.

This was Thursday. On Saturday night after dinner Connelly sat with the ladies in their sitting-room for a half hour. Mrs. Murdock, her cushioned rocking chair drawn close to the table, looked at a new magazine. Elmira worked on her embroidery, and when she finished a sunflower, patted it with the palm of her hand and held it off, studying it critically.

“Mr. Connelly is going to write a story for us, Auntie,” she said, by way of introducing an agreeable topic.

“That will be very nice,” said Mrs. Murdock, not quite sure on the subject, and raising her head to peer at Connelly over her glasses—“Have you anything now on hand?”

“Only one short novelette, 'The Hand of Jezebel.'”

“Dear me!” murmured Mrs. Murdock uneasily.

“Jezebel?'” said Elmira, raising her eyes in vivacious interest—“that's the woman who was thrown out of a window and eaten by dogs. I hope nobody's going to be eaten by dogs in your story.”

“Nobody,” said Connelly.

“Why don't you read us that, then?” asked Elmira with an air of triumph.

The sudden entrance of Mrs. Webster relieved Connelly from the necessity of answering this question, and a few minutes later he withdrew. But he said to himself that as Elmira really seemed to want him to write her a story he ought to do it.

For the ten nights following Connelly assiduously burned the midnight gas, and the scratching of his pen broke the stillness of his apartment. When Shenstone, returning late, softly opened the door and glanced in, he saw, through a cloud of smoke, his friend's shoulders and dark, long-locked head bent over the writing table. The muse had attacked Connelly vigorously.

At three o'clock in the morning of the tenth day of this literary carouse Connelly read over his maiden effort in the rose-water style and went to bed fatigued. At seven the next morning he got up, read it again, tore it into bits and dropped it in the waste-paper basket.

“I might as well try to write an advertisement for a new cosmetic,” he said savagely.

That evening, as he descended the last flight of stairs on his way to dinner, a soft voice from above called him by name. He looked up. Elmira was leaning on her folded arms on the balustrade of the landing above looking at him.

“I heard your step and ran out,” she said. “Why was your waste-basket so full of scraps this morning?”

“I had torn up something. How did you know it was?”

“I saw Delia carrying it down and asked her whose it was. Was it my story you had torn up?”

“Yes—it was n't a success.”

Elmira's face clouded. “It was my story and you had no right to tear it up. I wanted to see it.”

Connelly ascended the stairs and stood close to her, leaning on the balustrade.

“Do you really take any interest in my stories?” he asked, with his deep voice slightly roughened.

Elmira looked at him in dubious curiosity. The expression of his face was something new in her experience of authors.

“Of course I do,” she said, suddenly breaking out into a charming smile, “in every little thing connected with you.”

In return for this frank confession of friendship Connelly pressed The Young Person's soft hand, held it a moment, looking into her unabashed eyes in a manner strangely fond and troubled for one so averse to her appearance in the scheme of creation.

It was just about this time that the illness of his mother called Shenstone out of town. After hanging between life and death for some time she finally recovered, and it was with a light heart that Shenstone, six weeks from the day of his departure from No. 208, once again inserted his latch-key in the familiar key-hole.

It was nearly dinner time and quite dark. He encountered no one, reached his room, and, throwing down his bag, pushed open the door into Connelly's apartment. No one was there, and an unwonted air of neatness lent it an unfamiliar aspect. Some of Connelly's clothes, carefully folded, were hanging over the back of a chair. A round, hand-painted pin-cushion depending from the side of the mirror by a broad pink satin ribbon struck Shenstone's eye. The writing-table was clear of papers, save for one exact pile held in place by a glass ink-bottle. Shenstone, as he sought for matches, saw by the lingering light without the title of this production—“Aunt Hilda's Birthday Cake.” As his glance fell on these words his hand stopped in its straying search, and he stood still motionlessly gazing. At that moment the door opened and Connelly entered.

The greeting achieved and the gas lit, Connelly turned to the fireplace and began nervously rubbing his his hands. A marked change had taken place in him in the six weeks. He was neatly dressed, wore an ordinary necktie, and his long dark hair was clipped down to the conventional length. He looked handsome but commonplace, and his friend's keen eye detected in him a singular air as of one who is crestfallen and pretends to be elated, or who is elated and pretends to be crestfallen.

“What's this?” asked Shenstone, indicating “Aunt Hilda's Birthday Cake.” “Have you bowed your crested head and tamed your heart of fire to the proper pitch for writing children's stories?”

“Oh that!” said the other with a careless shrug. “that's a trifle. A little thing I wrote for Miss Deane. She wanted a story and so I tried my hand at the style she liked and produced that. It's light—the sort of thing for a young girl's reading. She thinks rather well of it.”

“What else have you been doing? Dashed off any nursery rhymes in your leisure moments when Aunt Hilda's cake was cooking?”

“Nothing. nothing”—with a languid wave of his hand. “I'm not writing much just at present. I've been idling lately.”

“Did you ever manage those changes in 'The Hand of Jezebel' we spoke of?”

“No—not exactly, I worked over it a little and decided nothing could be done. The pivot of the story was at fault, and if I took that out the whole thing fell to pieces. You know we can't spread stories like that broadcast. The reading public includes all ages and both sexes, and authors have got to consider that. I would n't have liked, after 'The Hand of Jezebel' had been published, to have seen such a girl as Miss Deane, for example, reading it. And so I never completed the changes in it.”

“What did you do with it? remodel it as a sequel to 'Aunt Hilda?'”

“No—not exactly. I”—he stirred with the toe of his boot some ashes in the fire-place, “There it is—all that's left of it.”

“Burned it!” Shenstone looked at the ashes, then at his friend's clipped hair, then at the manuscript of “Aunt Hilda's Birthday Cake.” As he looked the dinner bell sounded, and Connelly turned with sudden speed toward the bureau glass, and, before the blank gaze of his friend, solicitously eyed his reflection and then brushed his hair.

Shenstone was late for dinner and found the ladies all assembled. Mrs. Murdock looked benign and had a pleased glitter in her eye that he never remembered to have noticed before. Mrs. Webster greeted him with her gayest smiles, but Miss Elmira Deane was grave and dignified. She looked older and much more of a personage than she had done two months ago. She took her seat at the table without blushing, and Shenstone noticed that she served the soup, which she had never done before. To his surprise, too, on his taking the seat at her right hand, she turned and addressed to him an admirably-worded commonplace on the state of the weather. Elmira was coming out.

The dinner had progressed to the pudding when Mrs. Webster, who had been amusing them with gossip of the internal strife on The Shield, turned suddenly to Connelly and said with a rallying air—

“Well, how is the office to-day?”

A slight silence fell, and a slow and guilty flush mounted to Stafford Connelly's hair.

“What office?” asked Shenstone, turning his head from one to the other. To his amaze—with an air of dignity that seemed to have descended upon her from some illustrious forebear—Elmira answered,

“Mr. Connelly is now at work in an office. He has a position in Shaw & Smithers' Insurance Agency. It is a book-keeper's. Is it not, Mr. Connelly?”

She did not look at Connelly as she made this query, but, holding back her loose sleeve, stretched her plump, white hand out for the salt with an appearance of refined indifference.

“Oh, I'm a renegade!” said Connelly laughing desperately under his friend's unflinching gaze—“but we—that is I, thought perhaps it would be better, more remunerative you know.”

“'Just for a handful of silver he left us,'” murmured Shenstone—“But 'Aunt Hilda's Birthday Cake'—what of that?”

Elmira again answered, and, as she did so, raising her hand to put a stray lock of hair behind her ear, the lamp light struck a single ray from a small diamond on her third finger:—

“Wasn't that a sweet story? But then you know one cannot live on sweet stories, can one?” And she looked into Shenstone's eyes with an air of smiling condescension that was delightfully like her aunt's.

After dinner the ladies retired to the sitting room to hear Mr. Shenstone's new story. Elmira and Stafford Connelly, not immediately leaving the dining-room, Shenstone had an opportunity of hearing how Mr. Connelly had taken such a good position—a hundred and fifty a month—and they thought would give up literature. Shenstone saw that the ladies had decided the time was not yet ripe for more important disclosures. Then the story was read, but Elmira and Stafford Connelly continued to stay in the dining-room.

Indeed they were still there when, the story corrected and folded, Shenstone left the sitting-room and went upstairs. As he passed the open door of the dining-room he saw them standing together in front of the fire, Elmira's small, pointed foot and Stafford Connelly's large, pointed foot, side by side on the fender. The hand which was to have indited such great things rested about Elmira's slim waist, and, as Shenstone passed he heard her say with the new note of decision in her voice,

“No, dear, forty dollars a month is a great deal too expensive for a six-room flat in that locality.”

Shenstone turned stealthily away and stole along the passage and up the darkling staircase. He was thinking; and as Elmira's soft but decisive accents followed him upward, he murmured in an awed undertone to the darkness:

“I never quite realized before just what it meant—the Power of The Young Person.”

Geraldine Bonner

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