Marm Lisa

a circle at all; it was rather a polygon--

was four ones, not one four. If some gatherer of statistics

rubb, widow, a

eble-minded, aged

fic Simonson, twin

d in her hearing. She hired a Chinese cook, who slept at home; cleared out, for the use of Lisa and the twins, a small storeroom in which she commonly kept Eldorado face-powder; and herself occupied a sofa in the apartment of a friend of humanity in the next street. These arrangements enabled her to admit an experimenter on hypnotism, a mental healer who had been much abused by the orthodox members of her cult, and was evolving a method of her own, an ostensible delegate to an Occidental Conference of Religions, and a lady agent for a

of husband and wife so long as it was mutually agreeable. As a matter of fact it had not been mutually agreeable to Mr. Grubb more than six months, but such was the nobility of his character that he never disclosed his disappointment nor claimed any immunity from the responsibilities of the marriage state. Mr. Grubb was a timid, conventional soul, who would have given all the testimony of all the witnesses of his wedding ceremony for the mere presence of a single par

to take passage for California, where the climate might be supposed more favourable to the growth of saving ideas. Mr. Grubb would, of course, be obliged

pated. The ship became the birthplace of the twins, who had been most unwelcome when they were thought about as one, and entirely offensive when found to be two. The mother did not long survive the shock of her surprise and displeasure, and after naming the babies Atlantic and Pacific, and confiding them distinctly to the care of Mr., not Mrs., Grubb, she died, and was buried at sea, not far from Cape Horn. Mrs. Cora enjoyed at first the dramatic possibilities of her position o

, go to his work, come home and put them to bed, four or five days out of every seven in the week; but that is what he

he had been born in Paris, at the proper time, she would have been the leader of a salon; separated from that brilliant destiny by years, by race, and by imperious circumstance, she wielded the same sort of sceptre in her own circumscribed but appreciative

the ball

th' occas

There was always some duller spirit who could slip in and 'do the dishes,' that Mrs. Grubb might grace a conversazione on the steps or at the gate. She was not one of those napkin people who hide their talents, or who immure their lights under superincumbent bushels. Whatever was hers was everybody's, for she dispensed her favours with a liberal hand. She would never have permitted a child to suffer for lack of food or bed, for she was not at heart an unkind woman. You could see that

And who was the angel of deliverance? A little vacant-eyed, half-foolish, almost inarticulate child, whose feeble and sickly mother was dragging out a death-in-life existence in a street near by. The child saw Mr. Grubb wheeling the twins in a double perambulator: followed them home; came again, and then again, and then again; hung about the door, fell upon a dog that threatened to bite them, and drove it away howling; often stood over the perambulator with a sunshade for three hours at a time, without moving a muscle; and adored Mr. Grubb wi

loved her. Mrs. Grubb seldom saw her, and objected to nothing by which she herself was relieved of

I ever had,' she said to Mr. Grubb. 'If it turns out that I've brought a curse upon an innocent cre

,"' stammered Mr. Grubb, who had never b

ast three or four years. It's all she'll ever get, for she hasn't a soul now to look to for help. That's the way we human beings arrange things,--we, or the Lord, or the Evil One, or whoever it is; we bring

Mr. Grubb despairingly,--'don't!

to pray!--Yes, I must pray, I MUST . . . Oh, God! I do not ask forgiveness for him or f

body, they who came to prepare her for the grave

m Lisa.' She grew more human, more tractable, under Mr. Grubb's fostering care; but that blessed martyr had now been dead two ye

ently account for Pacific Simonson. She had apparently inherited instincts from tribes of warlike ancestors who skulked behind trees with battle-axes, and no one except her superior in size and courage was safe from her violent hand. She had little, wicked, dark

t table and lamp and pitcher of iced water, and herself in the chair as president or vice-president, secretary or humble trustee. There was that about her that precluded the possibility of simple membership. She always rose into office the week after she had joined any society. If there was no office vacant, then some bold spirit (generally male) would create one, that Mrs. Grubb might not wither in the privacy of the ranks. Before the charter members had fully learned the alphabet of their order and had gained a thorough understanding of the social revolution it was destined to work, Mrs. Grubb had mastered the whole scheme and was unfolding it before large classes for the study of the higher theory. The instant she had a tale to tell she presumed the 'listening earth'