one day as we were having luncheon—blathwayte being one of the party—annabel remarked: "i am terribly worried with one thing or another."

arthur and i hastened to express our sympathy, and to inquire the cause of her disquietude.

"for one thing, i can't think how to raise a little money for the parish nurse fund this year: we always have an entertainment of some kind every three or four years, you know, to eke out the subscriptions which aren't enough by themselves, and i really don't like the way this new cook fricassees: her gravy is so much too watery. yet in other things—especially frying—she suits me so well; and changing servants, especially cooks, is always so very worrying. i can't think what induced mrs. wilkinson to get married."

mrs. wilkinson was our ex-cook-housekeeper, who had so far forgotten herself—and annabel—as to enter the holy estate of matrimony shortly after i myself took that momentous plunge.

"i expect the same as induces most people," said arthur: "she wanted to."

"well, it was very inconsiderate and selfish after all my kindness and consideration for her," said annabel severely; "only two years ago i kept the situation open for two months while she had something the matter with her leg—i forget what it was, but i think it began with an 'e'—or was it an 'i'?—and i put up with the kitchenmaid and scullerymaid and outside help for all that time, giving mrs. wilkinson her full wages. and after that, i think it was too bad of her to throw me over in this way."

"and for the sake of a mere man," i added.

"no worse for a mere man than for a mere woman; the wrong thing was throwing me over at all, after all my kindness to her, and waiting for her for two months. of course, if i'd known she was going to be married, i should have let her leg take her away permanently. but i can't imagine what put such an idea into her head."

"probably the man she married," said fay; "men have a way of putting such ideas into our heads at times."

"and at her age, too," continued the aggrieved one; "she owns to forty-five, and if people own to forty-five they'll own to anything. and as to the new cook's gravies, they really are not what we have been accustomed to at the manor; so thin and tasteless; and i very much doubt if she is strict enough with cutler about bringing in sufficient vegetables. cutler requires a firm hand."

"and he gets it, miss kingsnorth," cried frank: "so firm that i've seen him stagger under it at times."

fay giggled. in fact, during the whole conversation she and frank had kept catching each other's eye, and indulging in suppressed mirth.

"i don't know if you have noticed it, mr. blathwayte," annabel went on, "but gardeners are so dreadfully obstinate about bringing in sufficient vegetables. cutler is really terrible about the peas. he seems to think they are planted to be looked at instead of eaten. and that is where mrs. wilkinson was so satisfactory: she mastered him completely, and made him bring in whatever vegetables she required."

"that augurs well for her chances of conjugal felicity, and less well for those of her husband," i remarked.

"it was so silly of her to want a husband at her time of life," continued annabel; "besides being so unfair to me. and what we are to do this year to eke out the parish nurse money i cannot imagine. i had a sale of work two years ago, and a concert two years before that, and i don't want to have either of them again so soon, though i don't see what else i can have, and we haven't money enough without."

"it is such a business getting up a sale of work in a small parish like this," said arthur.

annabel agreed with him. "and in a little village people don't want a lot of tea-cosies and antimacassars and fancy blotters," she added, as if in large towns the thirst for these articles was insatiable.

"why not have a jumble sale?" suggested fay. "jumble sales are so splendid at killing three birds with one stone: they clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and clear out your wardrobe at the same time."

"i don't see how they feed the hungry," arthur objected.

but fay had her answer ready. "by the money they make, of course. and in the present instance feeding the hungry would be a synonym for supporting the parish nurse."

annabel's brow was lined with anxiety. "i see what you mean about jumble sales, but they have terrible disadvantages."

"as for instance?" i prompted her. i saw she was bursting to divulge the tragedies attendant upon jumble sales.

"we had one, if you remember, five or six years ago for the village hall, and made quite a nice little sum by it. but cutler bought one of reggie's old suits at it, and wore it on a sunday afternoon when he came up to see after the stove in the greenhouses; and i saw him standing in the peach-house and went up to him and put my hand on his shoulder, thinking he was reggie! wasn't it dreadful? i feel i shall never get over it as long as i live."

of course the twins shouted with laughter at this, and arthur and i were not far behind them in our exuberance of mirth. but annabel looked quite serious—even distressed.

"i see nothing to laugh at in it—nothing at all," she said in accents of reproof; "it was a most embarrassing position both for me and for cutler. i'm sure i pitied him as much as i pitied myself."

"did you say anything?" i asked as soon as i could speak—"while you still believed him to be me, i mean?"

annabel blushed: five long years had not obliterated the disgrace of that terrible moment in the peach-house. "unfortunately i did; i said: 'what are you doing here, my dear?' it wouldn't have mattered so much if i hadn't said 'my dear.' but i did."

of course our mirth burst forth afresh. no one who knew annabel could have blamed us.

"i see nothing funny in my calling cutler 'my dear,'" she said with dignity; "quite the reverse."

"but it was—it was excruciatingly funny," i gasped.

"i can assure you it was not intentional."

"you needn't assure us," i said; "we never for one mad moment suspected that it was."

"and you can now see," continued annabel, "what a horror i have of jumble sales. it would be terrible if such a thing occurred again. and i quite agree with what you were saying, reggie, about the prime minister and the income tax."

for a moment i thought that annabel had taken leave of her senses, but on looking round i perceived that this sudden change of subject was for the benefit of jeavons and a footman, who had just entered the dining-room in order to introduce the pudding and remove our plates. my sister usually dropped into politics, or into other questions equally alien to her real thoughts and interests when the servants entered the room, and she believed that they believed that she was continuing a conversation. but i feel sure that they were not so easily taken in—at any rate, jeavons was not; i cannot answer for the credulity of footmen, but my own private opinion is that they think exclusively of cricket and football matches, and never attend to the conversation of their so-called betters at all.

without waiting for the withdrawal of the listening retainers, frank exclaimed: "i've got a ripping idea—a million times better than a jumble sale. let's have a pastoral play."

"papa always said that a shilling in the pound was far too much, except in time of war," said annabel, in a raised tone of voice and with a warning look at frank. then, as jeavons thoughtfully banged the door to show that he was no longer present, she continued in a softer voice: "yes, my dear frank, what was it you said? i never like to discuss arrangements before the servants."

"i didn't see any harm in suggesting a pastoral play before them," replied the irrepressible frank; "but of course i shouldn't have gone on talking about the time when you kissed cutler in the peach-house as long as they were in the room."

annabel gave a little shriek. "my dear boy, what are you talking about? i didn't kiss cutler, i only put my hand upon his shoulder."

"it makes a much better tale of it if you say you kissed him," persisted frank; "it really does. i should tell it like that the next time, if i were you."

"i shall do nothing of the kind. it would sound so dreadful, and, besides, it wouldn't be true."

"still it makes it much funnier," persisted frank.

"but it couldn't possibly have happened," explained annabel. "i should never have thought of kissing reggie on a sunday afternoon; such an idea would never have occurred to me. and if i hadn't tried to kiss reggie, i should naturally not have kissed cutler. but do go on with what you were saying about a pastoral play."

annabel was one of those people who, whilst appearing utterly absent-minded and wrapped up in their own concerns, "take notice" (as nurses say of children) far more than one imagines. frank's suggestion had not escaped her.

"i think a pastoral play would be simply ripping," he repeated, "and bring you in no end of money for your old district nurse. fay and i would get it up and run it for you, as we were always acting and being mixed up with theatrical things when father was alive, and it would be like old times for us to be on the stage again, wouldn't it, fay?"

my wife's eyes sparkled. "rather! i should simply adore it."

it was news to me that the twins had been so much in the theatrical world during their father's lifetime, and not altogether pleasing news, either. but, considering that he had chosen his wife from "the profession," i could hardly be surprised at his familiarity with it.

"then that's settled," exclaimed frank, as usual carrying fay and annabel with him on the wings of his enthusiasm. "it will be the greatest fun in the world! we'll get the loxleys to come and stay here and help us with the principal parts, and we can train the choir-boys and the village children to do the crowds and the dances and things like that. it will be simply top-hole."

"but where should we have it?" asked annabel, breathless with the rapidity of her flight.

"in the garden, of course: i'll show you an ideal spot. the audience will sit on rows of chairs on the lawn, and the stage will be on that, raised piece at the far end which sticks out into the shrubbery, and the actors will come on from behind the rhododendrons.

"and what play shall you act?" asked my sister, still gasping.

"it must be one of shakspere's," said arthur; "i never heard of a pastoral play that wasn't shakspere's."

"and shakspere's are sufficiently classical and improving and respectable," fay chimed in, "to be in the same galère as the parish nurse."

annabel beamed. "fay is quite right: it would never do to have anything that was at all doubtful or risky in connection with the parish nursing fund; but shakspere's plays almost count as lesson-books, they are so educational and instructive; they are regularly studied at girls' schools, and were even in my schooldays. i have forgotten it all since, but we read a good deal of shakspere when i was at school, and different girls took the different parts, which made it so much more interesting."

i daren't look at fay, for fear of seeing and responding to an irreverent smile. "shakespere is evidently the man for the place," i said.

"i always think he was a very clever writer," continued annabel, "and nice-looking too, to judge from his portraits, with quite a distinct look of reggie—especially about the beard."

"i am afraid the resemblance ended there," i sighed, "and did not ascend to the brain."

"and i always think it is so tiresome," my sister went on, "of people to say he was the same as bacon. if he had been, people would have known it at the time, and would not have had to wait two or three hundred years to find it out. it seems to me a most absurd idea. what should you think if two or three hundred years hence people said that bernard shaw and mr. gladstone were the same?"

"i should say they were mistaken," i answered.

here frank put in his oar, and said that bernard shaw was his especial idol, and that therefore such an accusation on the part of posterity would cause him the keenest pain. "i simply adore bernard shaw," he added.

"and papa simply adored mr. gladstone," said annabel; "so that naturally i do not wish to say a word against either of them. all i say is that it would be a mistake to mix them up."

the meeting unanimously agreeing with her, we passed on to the subject in chief.

"which play shall we select?" asked blathwayte.

"we can do either as you like it, or a midsummer night's dream," replied frank. "fay and i have acted in both. we used to do a lot of that sort of thing in father's time, ever since we were quite little. mother's sister, aunt gertrude, was an actress before she married, you know, as mother was, only mother was a dancer, and she and mother used to teach us to dance and act from our cradles."

i had heard a good deal of this aunt from both fay and frank, and i freely admit i was decidedly jealous both of her and of what she represented. she was an actress who had married an australian squatter, and she had had more to do with the upbringing of the twins than their own mother had. she had been a second mother to them both before and after their own mother's death, as the wildacres frequently stayed with her and her husband on that far-off australian sheep-farm. i gathered that wildacre had put the little money he possessed into his brother-in-law's farm, and it had repaid him handsomely. when he came to england to complete his children's education (and, incidentally, his own life), the wrench of parting from their aunt had been as great a sorrow to the twins as their mother's death. but i could read between the lines that his wife's people belonged to a much lower social stratum than he did himself, and that he felt it his duty to his children to launch them on the world in the position to which by right they belonged. therefore he took them from mr. and mrs. sherard, their maternal aunt and uncle, and left them to the guardianship of his old college-chum, arthur blathwayte.

i knew that it had been—and still was, as far as frank was concerned—the fixed intention of the twins to return to australia to see their beloved aunt as soon as they came of age and could do as they liked; but marriage had modified this decision on the part of fay; she still, however, cherished a hope of visiting her maternal relations some time, though i cannot say that the letters of mrs. sherard to her niece induced me to share this hope.

that mrs. sherard was still a handsome woman, her photograph testified; but the refined beauty which mrs. wildacre had not been permitted to survive had developed—in the case of her sister—into something not far removed from coarseness.

"i don't know about as you like it," said annabel doubtfully. "doesn't a girl dress up as a boy, or something of that kind in it?"

"of course," replied frank: "rosalind. fay makes a perfectly spiffing rosalind. she played it at a pastoral play some of father's friends had at richmond; and she looked positively ripping in her green doublet and trunk hose, and little green cap with a feather in it. all the girls fell in love with her."

"i don't think i could have any doublet or trunk hose in connection with the parish nurse," said annabel solemnly; "the fund is not very popular as it is, and i couldn't bear to do anything to make it less so."

i laughed at annabel's way of putting it; but at the back of my mind i was conscious of a spasm of what fay would have called "kingsnorthism," which violently protested against the idea of my wife's appearing in doublet and trunk hose. "then what about a midsummer night's dream?" i suggested.

"fay is awfully good in that, too," replied frank; "she plays titania and i play puck, and we introduce a little dance of our own in the middle. then bob loxley can play bottom, and elsie hermia and mamie helena; and we can easily get people to take the other parts. the choir-boys can do the rest of the athenian workmen, and the village children the rest of the fairies. they will soon pick it up, when there's one good actor to lead them."

and so, after much consultation among ourselves, and much searchings of heart on the part of annabel as to whether the parish nurse would suffer in any way from this identification of her interests with those of shakspere, it was decided that a midsummer night's dream should be performed in the garden of the manor house at the end of july, just before the time when some of our neighbours flitted to the seaside for their children's holidays, and others, whose children were of a larger growth, repaired to shoots in scotland. the loxleys came for a good long time (longer, in fact, than annabel considered necessary), in order to assist in coaching the village infants in their parts. they were good-looking, good-tempered young people, their looks and their tempers being, in my humble opinion, superior to their form; but fay and frank thoroughly enjoyed and entered into their high spirits and youthful pranks. there was no harm in them, but they were rather too theatrical for my provincial taste, and very much too theatrical for annabel's and arthur's. they brought out a side of the twins that i had never seen—that side which had been fostered by their mother and aunt, and afterwards indulged by their father, and although it rejoiced my heart to see my darling so happy and in such good spirits, i could not altogether stifle a wish that her tastes and mine were rather more on the same lines.

that, i think, is one of the disadvantages of marrying late in life: it is so much less easy to adapt oneself than it was when one was young. fay, of course, was young enough to adapt herself to anything; but i didn't feel it was playing the game to let her do so, unless i was prepared to meet her half-way; and i was confronted by the horrible fact that the half-way meeting-place is sometimes too long an excursion for persons of advancing years. however sincerely we may wish to do so, we cannot walk so far.

i remember once remarking upon this to my sister, with regret at my loss of adaptability; but she saw otherwise, and said that one of the comforts of middle life is that by that time you have found the right groove and can stick to it, unswayed by any passing winds of doctrine that may blow your way. but i cannot feel like this. all i know is that i have found a rut and am unable to climb out of it; but that it is the right rut or even a desirable rut i have very serious doubts.

i think that this increasing difficulty of altering ourselves as we grow older applies to men more than to women, since women are far more adaptable by nature than we are. but i very much doubt whether the adaptability of the middle-aged woman goes far below the surface. i feel sure that the bride who forgot her own people and her father's house was a very young bride indeed.

thus to my infinite regret i discovered that—try as i would—i could not make myself like the same things and people and pleasures as fay liked; and i recognised that this want of unanimity arose not from the difference in our ages, but from the difference in our characters. i have known parents and children—who, though separated by a generation, were similar in character—enjoy exactly the same things. and i do not think that the difference in years between my wife and myself affected this diversity of tastes, except in so far as my age prevented me from becoming one with her in mind, as i already was in heart. i could control my words and my actions, but i could not help my thoughts and my feelings: nobody can who is over forty, but i believe that to youth even this miracle is possible. the very diversities of character which make for love militate against friendship, and therefore the sooner they are done with the better, after courtship is over and marriage begins. but the tragedy of my life lay in the fact that i was too old to do away with them on my part, and i could not expect fay to do for me what i was unable (however willing, and heaven knows i was willing enough) to do for her. so although—or rather, because—i could not throw myself into her world, i would not ask her to throw herself into mine.

doubtless i was wrong in this—i evidently was, as subsequent events proved, and as annabel did not hesitate to point out to me. but i did what seemed to me to be right at the time, as i always try to do; and the fact that what i think right at the time almost invariably turns out to be wrong afterwards seems to be rather more my misfortune than my fault: just part of that instinct of failure which has haunted me all my life.

a strong man—as annabel was never tired at pointing out to me afterwards—would have made his own world and his own interest so paramount and absorbing that his wife would have been compelled, willy-nilly, to make them hers; but i was not a strong man. morever i fully recognised the truth that if you take anything from anybody, especially anybody young, you must supply something in its place: nature abhors a vacuum, and youth abhors it still more; therefore if i had succeeded in weaning fay from her passion for acting and all the pleasure and excitement it involved, i should have been bound in honour to give her in its place other and equally absorbing interests, and these it was not in my power to supply. what pleasure could the calm country life of restham—which so exactly suited annabel and me—offer to a youthful and ardent spirit such as fay's? none at all, except of a very passive sort, and the passive tense has no charm for any one under thirty. so i had not the heart to take away from my darling anything that added to the joy of a life that i feared might prove to be a little dull for her, and for her dear sake i swallowed the loxleys and everything else connected with amateur theatricals.

after weeks of rehearsals of the village children and a further influx of visitors (old friends of the twins), to take the part of the duke and the other mortals, the great day dawned at last. it was glorious weather, as fay felt sure it would be, for she assured me that she and frank were always lucky where weather was concerned, and there were two performances—one in the afternoon, and another by moonlight assisted by chinese lanterns. the places were all filled, and the audience was most enthusiastic; even annabel (who with arthur and myself had been banished from all the rehearsals) applauded heartily and beamed with approbation. the young local talent had been admirably trained, and the leading actors performed their parts with an ease that savoured more of the professional than of the amateur. (but this idea i locked up in my own breast: no expression of it would i have breathed to annabel for worlds.) the village band, led by the organist on the drawing-room piano, which had been driven into the shrubbery for the purpose, conducted itself admirably, and discoursed music that was undeniably sweet. and the glamour of shakspere and of summer—the two greatest interpreters of beauty the world has ever known—was upon everything.

but to me the climax of the whole affair—the crowning gem of the performance to which all the rest was but an adequate setting—was the fairy-dance introduced by fay and frank, as titania and puck. i shall not attempt to describe it, for how can mere words convey the indescribable and elusive charm of the perfection of grace and motion? it gave me the same sensations as i had experienced nearly a year ago when the twins danced the dance of the needlework guild, but greatly intensified, of course, by the beauty of their dress and the effectiveness of their surroundings. it was a sight to fill the onlookers with the joy of life, and to make the old feel young again.

and as my blood throbbed in my veins at this vision of the incarnation of youth and joy and all the fulness of life, i understood why wildacre had fallen in love with a dancer.