* * * * *

I was not at Mittleham when she came over to announce her engagement, but I heard of it when Mrs. Godfrey and Attley came, forty miles an hour, over to me, and Mrs. Godfrey called me names of the worst for suppression of information.

‘As long as it wasn’t me, I don’t care,’ said Attley.

‘I believe you knew it all along,’ Mrs. Godfrey repeated.  ’Else what made you drive that man literally into her arms?’

‘To ask after the dog Harvey,’ I replied.

‘Then, what’s the beast doing here?’ Attley demanded, for Malachi and the dog Harvey were deep in a council of the family with Bettina, who was being out-argued.

‘Oh, Harvey seemed to think himself de trop where he was,’ I said.  ’And she hasn’t sent after him.  You’d better save Bettina before they kill her.’

‘There’s been enough lying about that dog,’ said Mrs. Godfrey to me.  ’If he wasn’t born in lies, he was baptized in ’em.  D’you know why she called him Harvey?  It only occurred to me in those dreadful days when I was ill, and one can’t keep from thinking, and thinks everything.  D’you know your Boswell?  What did Johnson say about Hervey—­with an e?’

‘Oh, that’s it, is it?’ I cried incautiously.  ’That was why I ought to have verified my quotations.  The spelling defeated me.  Wait a moment, and it will come back.  Johnson said:  “He was a vicious man,"’ I began.

‘"But very kind to me,"’ Mrs. Godfrey prompted.  Then, both together, ‘"If you call a dog Hervey, I shall love him."’

’So you were mixed up in it.  At any rate, you had your suspicions from the first?  Tell me,’ she said.

‘Ella,’ I said, ’I don’t know anything rational or reasonable about any of it.  It was all—­all woman-work, and it scared me horribly.’

‘Why?’ she asked.

That was six years ago.  I have written this tale to let her know—­wherever she may be.

THE COMFORTERS

     Until thy feet have trod the Road
       Advise not wayside folk,
     Nor till thy back has borne the Load
       Break in upon the Broke.

     Chase not with undesired largesse
       Of sympathy the heart
     Which, knowing her own bitterness,
       Presumes to dwell apart.

     Employ not that glad hand to raise
       The God-forgotten head
     To Heaven, and all the neighbours’ gaze—­
       Cover thy mouth instead.

     The quivering chin, the bitten lip,
       The cold and sweating brow,
     Later may yearn for fellowship—­
       Not now, you ass, not now!

     Time, not thy ne’er so timely speech,
       Life, not thy views thereon,
     Shall furnish or deny to each
       His consolation.

     Or, if impelled to interfere,
       Exhort, uplift, advise,
     Lend not a base, betraying ear
       To all the victim’s cries.