# Ilka on the Hill Top (collection)/Mabel and I

II — III — IV

### MABEL AND I.
#### (A PHILOSOPHICAL FAIRY TALE.)

I.
"I want to see things as they are," said I to Mabel.
"I don't see how else you can see them," answered Mabel, with a laugh. "You certainly don't see them as they are not."
"Yes, I do," said I. "I see men and things only as they seem. It is so exasperating to think that I can never get beyond the surface of anything. My friends may appear very good and beautiful to me, and yet I may all the while have a suspicion that the appearance is deceitful, that they are really neither good nor beautiful."
"In case that was so, I shouldn't want to know it," said Mabel. "It would make me very unhappy."
"That is where you and I differ," said I.
Mabel was silent for a moment, and I believe she was a little hurt, for I had spoken rather sharply.
"But what good would it do you, Jamie?" asked she, looking up at me from under her wide-brimmed straw hat.
"What would do me good?" said I, for I had quite forgotten what we had been talking about.
"To see things as they are. There is my father now; he knows a great deal, and I am sure I shouldn't care to know any more than he does."
"Well, that is where you and I differ," said I again.
"I wish you wouldn't be always saying 'that is where you and I differ.' Somehow I don't like to hear you say it. It doesn't sound like yourself."
And Mabel turned away from me, took up a leaf from the ground and began to pick it to pieces.
We were sitting, at the time when this conversation took place, up in the gorge not half a mile from the house where Mabel's father lived. I was a tutor in the college, about twenty-three years old, and I was very fond of German philosophy. And now, since I have told who I was, I suppose I ought to tell you something about Mabel. Mabel was,—but really it is impossible to say what she was, except that she was very, very charming. As for the rest, she was the daughter of Professor Markham, and I had known her since my college days when she was quite a little girl. And now she wore long dresses; and, what was more, she had her hair done up in a sort of Egyptian pyramid on the top of her head. The dress she had on to-day I was particularly fond of; it was of a fine light texture, and the pattern was an endless repetition of a small, sweet-brier bud, with two delicate green leaves attached to it.
I had spread a shawl out on the ground where Mabel was sitting, for fear she should soil her fine dress. A large weeping-willow spread its branches all around us, and drooped until it almost touched the ground, so that it made a sort of green, sunlit summer-house, for Mabel and me to live in. Between the rocks at our feet a clear brook came rushing down, throwing before it little showers of spray, which fell like crystal pearls on the water, sailed down the swift eddies and then vanished in the next whirlpool. A couple of orioles in brand-new yellow uniforms, with black epaulets on their shoulders, were busy in the tree over our heads, but stopped now and then in their work to refresh themselves with a little impromptu duet.
"Work and play Make glad the day,"—
that seemed to be their philosophy, and Mabel and I were quite ready to agree with them, although we had been idling since the early dawn. But then it was so long since we had seen each other, that we thought we could afford it.
"Somehow," said Mabel at last (for she never could pout long at a time), "I don't like you so well since you came back from Germany. You are not as nice as you used to be. What did you go there for, anyway?"
"Why," I responded, quite seriously, "I went there to study; and I did learn a good deal there, although naturally I was not as industrious as I might have been."
"I can readily believe that. But, tell me, what did you learn that you mightn't just as well have learned at home?"
I thought it was no use in being serious any longer; so I tossed a pebble into the water, glanced up into Mabel's face and answered gayly:
"Well, I learned something about gnomes and pigmies and elves and fairies and salamanders, and—"
"And what?" interrupted Mabel, impatiently.
"And salamanders," repeated I. "You know the forests and rivers and mountains of Germany are full of all sorts of strange sprites, and you know the people believe in them, and that is one of the things which make life in the Old World so fascinating. But here we are too prosy and practical and business-like, and we don't believe in anything except what we can touch with our hands, and see with our eyes, and sell for money."
"Now, Jamie, that is not true," responded Mabel, energetically; for she was a strong American at heart, and it didn't take much to rouse her. "I believe, for instance, that you know a great deal although not as much as my father; but I can't see your learning with my eyes, neither can I touch it with my hands—"
"But I hope I can sell it for money," interrupted I, laughing.
"No, joking aside. I don't think we are quite as bad as you would like to make us out."
"And then you think, perhaps, that the gnomes and river-sprites would be as apt to thrive here as in the Old World?"
"Who knows?" said Mabel, with an expression that seemed to me half serious and half playful. "But I wish you would tell me something about your German sprites. I am so very ignorant in such things, you know."
I stretched myself comfortably on the edge of the shawl at Mabel's feet, and began to tell her the story about the German peasant who caught the gnome that had robbed his wheat-field.
"The gnomes wear tiny red caps," I went on, "which make them invisible. They are called tarn-caps, or caps of darkness. The peasant that I am telling about had a suspicion that it was the gnomes who had been stealing his wheat. One evening, he went out after sunset (for the gnomes never venture out from their holes until the sun is down) and began to fight in the air with his cane about the borders of the field. Then suddenly he saw a very tiny man with knee-breeches and large frightened eyes, turning a somersault in the grass right at his feet. He had struck off his cap, and then, of course, the gnome was no longer invisible. The peasant immediately seized the cap and put it into his pocket; the gnome begged and implored to get it back, but instead of that, the peasant caught him up in his arms and carried him to his house, where he kept him as a captive until the other gnomes sent a herald to him and offered him a large ransom. Then the gnome was again set free and the peasant made his fortune by the transaction."
"Wouldn't it be delightful if such things could ever happen here?" exclaimed Mabel, while her beautiful eyes shone with pleasure at the very thought.
"I should think so," said I. "It is said, too, that if there are gnomes and elves in the neighborhood, they always gather around you when you talk about them."
"Really?" And Mabel sent a timid glance in among the large mossy trunks of the beeches and pines.
"Tell me something more, Jamie," she demanded, eagerly.
Mabel had such a charming way of saying "Jamie," that I could never have opposed a wish of hers, whatever it might be. The professor called me James, and among my friends I was Jim; but it was only Mabel who called me Jamie. So I told her all I knew about the nixies, who sang their strange songs at midnight in the water; about the elves, who lived in the roses and lilies, and danced in a ring around the tall flowers until the grass never grew there again; and about the elf-maiden who led the knight astray when he was riding to his bride on his wedding-day. And all the while Mabel's eyes seemed to be growing larger; the blood burned in her cheeks, and sometimes she shuddered, although the afternoon was very warm. When I had finished my tale, I rose and seated myself at her side. The silence suddenly seemed quite oppressive; it was almost as if we could hear it. For some reason neither Mabel nor I dared to speak; but we both strained our ears listening to something, we did not know what. Then there came a strange soft whisper which filled the air all about us, and I thought I heard somebody calling my name.
"They are calling you, Jamie," whispered Mabel.
"Calling me? Who?" said I.
"Up there in the tree. No, not there. It is down in the brook. Everywhere."
"Oh," cried I, with a forced laugh. "We are two great children, Mabel. It is nothing."
Suddenly all was silent once more; but the wood-stars and violets at my feet gazed at me with such strange, wistful eyes, that I was almost frightened.
"You shouldn't have done that, Jamie," said Mabel. "You killed them."
"Killed what?"
"The voices, the strange, small voices."
"My dear girl," said I, as I took Mabel's hands and helped her to rise. "I am afraid we are both losing our senses. Come, let us go. The sun is already down. It must be after tea-time."
"But you know we were talking about them," whispered she, still with the same fascinated gaze in her eyes. "Ah, there, take care! Don't step on that violet. Don't you see how its mute eyes implore you to spare its life?"
"Yes, dear, I see," answered I; and I drew Mabel's arm through mine, and we hurried down the wood-path, not daring to look back, for we had both a feeling as if some one was walking close behind us, in our steps.
II.
It was a little after ten, I think, when I left the professor's house, where I had been spending the evening, and started on my homeward way.
As I walked along the road the thought of Mabel haunted me. I wondered whether I ever should be a professor, like her father, and ended with concluding that the next best thing to being one's self a professor would be to be a professor's son-in-law. But, somehow, I wasn't at all sure that Mabel cared anything about me.
"Things are not what they seem," I murmured to myself, "and the real Mabel may be a very different creature from the Mabel whom I know."
There was not much comfort in that thought, but nevertheless I could not get rid of it. I glanced up to the big round face of the moon, which had a large ring of mist about its neck; and looking more closely I thought I saw a huge floundering body, of which the moon was the head, crawling heavily across the sky, and stretching a long misty arm after me. I hurried on, not caring to look right or left; and I suppose I must have taken the wrong turn, for as I lifted my eyes, I found myself standing under the willow-tree at the creek where Mabel and I had been sitting in the afternoon. The locusts, with their shrill metallic voices, kept whirring away in the grass, and I heard their strange hissing sh-h-h-h-h, now growing stronger, then weakening again, and at last stopping abruptly, as if to say: "Didn't I do well?" But the blue-eyed violets shook their heads, and that means in their language: "No, I don't think so at all." The water, which descended in three successive falls into the wide, dome-shaped gorge, seemed to me, as I stood gazing at it, to be going the wrong way, crawling, with eager, foamy hands, up the ledges of the rock to where I was standing.
"I must certainly be mad," thought I, "or I am getting to be a poet."
In order to rid myself of the painful illusion, which was every moment getting more vivid, I turned my eyes away and hurried up along the bank, while the beseeching murmur of the waters rang in my ears.
As I had ascended the clumsy wooden stairs which lead up to the second fall, I suddenly saw two little blue lights hovering over the ground directly in front of me.
"Will-o'-the-wisps," said I to myself. "The ground is probably marshy."
I pounded with my cane on the ground, but, as I might have known, it was solid rock. It was certainly very strange. I flung myself down behind the trunk of a large hemlock. The two blue lights came hovering directly toward me. I lifted my cane,—with a swift blow it cut the air, and,—who can imagine my astonishment? Right in front of me I saw a tiny man, not much bigger than a good-sized kitten, and at his side lay a small red cap; the cap, of course, I immediately snatched up and put it in a separate apartment in my pocket-book to make sure that I should not lose it. One of the lights hastened away to the rocks and vanished before I could overtake it.
There was something so very funny in the idea of finding a gnome in the State of New York, that the strange fear which had possessed me departed and I felt very much inclined to laugh. My blow had quite stunned the poor little creature; he was still lying half on his back, as if trying to raise himself on his elbows, and his large black eyes had a terrified stare in them, and seemed to be ready to spring out of their sockets.
"Give—give me back my cap," he gasped at last, in a strange metallic voice, which sounded to me like the clinking of silver coins.
"Not so fast, my dear," said I. "What will you give me for it?"
"Anything," he cried, as he arose and held out his small hand.
"Then listen to me," continued I. "Can you help me to see things as they are? In that case I shall give you back your cap, but on no other condition."
"See things as they are?" repeated the gnome, wonderingly.
"Yes, and not only as they seem," rejoined I, with emphasis.
"Return here at midnight," began he, after a long silence. "Upon the stone where you are sitting you shall find what you want. If you take it, leave my cap on the same spot."
"That is a fair bargain," said I. "I shall be here promptly at twelve. Good-night."
I had extended my palm to shake hands with my new friend, but he seemed to resent my politeness; with a sort of snarl, he turned a somersault and rolled down the hill-side to where the rocks rise from the water.
I need not say that I kept my promise about returning. And what did I find? A pair of spectacles of the most exquisite workmanship; the glasses so clear as almost to deceive the sight, and the bows of gold spun into fine elastic threads.
"We shall soon see what they are good for," thought I, as I put them into the silver case, the wonderful finish of which I could hardly distinguish by the misty light of the moon.
The little tarn-cap I, of course, left on the stone. As I wandered homeward through the woods, I thought, with a certain fierce triumph, that now the beauty of Mabel's face should no more deceive me.
"Now, Mabel," I murmured, "now I shall see you as you are."
III.
At three o'clock in the afternoon I knocked at the door of the professor's study.
"Come in," said the professor.
"Is—is Mabel at home?" asked I, when I had shaken hands with the professor and seated myself in one of his hard, straight-backed chairs.
"She will be down presently," answered he "There is The Nation. You may amuse yourself with that until she comes."
I took up the paper; but the spectacles seemed to be burning in my breast-pocket, and although I stared intently at the print, I could hardly distinguish a word. What if I tried the power of the spectacles on the professor? The idea appeared to me a happy one, and I immediately proceeded to put it into practice. With a loudly beating heart, I pulled the silver case from my pocket, rubbed the glasses with my handkerchief, put them on my nose, adjusted the bows behind my ears, and cast a stealthy glance at the professor over the edge of my paper. But what was my horror! It was no longer the professor at all. It was a huge parrot, a veritable parrot in slippers and dressing-gown! I dared hardly believe my senses. Was the professor really not a man, but a parrot? My dear trusted and honored teacher, whom I had always looked upon as the wisest and most learned of living men, could it be possible that he was a parrot? And still there he sat, grave and sedate, a pair of horn spectacles on his large, crooked beak, a few stiff feathers bristling around his bald crown, and his small eyes blinking with a sort of meaningless air of confidence, as I often had seen a parrot's eyes doing.
"My gnome has been playing a trick on me," I thought. "This is certainly not to see things as they are. If I only had his tarn-cap once more, he should not recover it so cheaply."
"Well, my boy," began the professor, as he wheeled round in his chair, and knocked the ashes out of his pipe on the polished andirons which adorned the empty fire-place. "How is the world using you? Getting over your German whims, eh?"
Surely the spectacles must in some mysterious way have affected my ears too. The professor's voice certainly did sound very curious—very much like the croak of some bird that had learned human language, but had no notion of what he was saying. The case was really getting serious. I threw the paper away, stared my teacher full in the face, but was so covered with confusion that I could hardly utter two coherent words.
"Yes, yes,—certainly,—professor," I stammered. "German whims?—I mean things as they are—and—and not as they seem—das Ding an sich—beg your pardon—I am not sure, I—I comprehended your meaning—beg your pardon?"
"My dear boy," croaked the professor, opening his beak in great bewilderment, and showing a little thick red tongue, which curved upward like that of a parrot, "you are certainly not well. Mabel! Mabel! Come down! James is ill! Yes, you certainly look wretchedly. Let me feel your pulse."
I suppose my face must have been very much flushed, for the blood had mounted to my head and throbbed feverishly in my temples. As I heard the patter of Mabel's feet in the hall, a great dread came over me. What if she too should turn out to be somebody else—a strange bird or beast? No, not for all the world would I see Mabel—the dear, blessed Mabel—any differently from what she had always seemed to me. So I tore the spectacles from my nose, and crammed them into the case, which again I thrust into my pocket. In the same instant Mabel's sweet face appeared in the door.
"Did you call me, papa?" she said; then, as she saw me reclining on the sofa, where her father (now no longer a parrot) had forced me to lie down, there came a sudden fright into her beautiful eyes, and she sprang to my side and seized my hand in hers.
"Are you ill, Jamie?" she asked, in a voice of unfeigned anxiety, which went straight to my heart. "Has anything happened to you?"
"Hush, hush!" said the professor. "Don't make him speak. It might have proved a serious attack. Too much studying, my dear—too much studying. To be sure, the ambition of young men nowadays is past belief. It was different in my youth. Then, every young man was satisfied if he could only make a living—found a home for himself, and bring up his family in the fear of God. But now, dear me, such things are mere nursery ambitions."
I felt wretched and guilty in my heart! To be thus imposing upon two good people, who loved me and were willing to make every sacrifice for my comfort! Mabel had brought a pillow, and put it under my head; and now she took out some sort of crochet-work, and seated herself on a chair close by me. The professor stood looking at his watch and counting my pulse-beats.
"One hundred and five," he muttered, and shook his bald head. "Yes, he has fever. I saw it at once, as he entered the room."
"Professor," I cried out, in an agony of remorse, "really I meant nothing by it. I know very well that you are not a parrot—that you are—"
"I—I—a parrot!" he exclaimed, smiling knowingly at Mabel. "No, I should think not. He is raving, my dear. High fever. Just what I said. Won't you go out and send Maggie for the doctor? No, stop, I shall go myself. Then he will be sure to come without delay. It is high time."
The professor buttoned his coat up to his chin, fixed his hat at the proper angle on the back of his head, and departed in haste.
"How do you feel now, Jamie dear?" said Mabel, after awhile.
"I am very well, I thank you, Mabel," answered I. "In fact, it is all nonsense. I am not sick at all."
"Hush, hush! you must not talk so much," demanded she, and put her hand over my mouth.
My excitement was now gradually subsiding, and my blood was returning to its usual speed.
"If you don't object, Mabel," said I, "I'll get up and go home. There's nothing whatever the matter with me."
"Will you be a good boy and keep quiet," rejoined she, emphasizing each word by a gentle tap on my head with her crochet-needle.
"Well, if it can amuse you to have me lying here and playing sick," muttered I, "then, of course, I will do anything to please you."
"That is right," said she, and gave me a friendly nod.
So I lay still for a long while, until I came once more to think of my wonderful spectacles, which had turned the venerable professor into a parrot. I thought I owed Mabel an apology for what I had done to her father, and I determined to ease my mind by confiding the whole story to her.
"Mabel," I began, raising myself on my elbow, "I want to tell you something, but you must promise me beforehand that you will not be angry with me."
"Angry with you, Jamie?" repeated she, opening her bright eyes wide in astonishment. "I never was angry with you in my life."
"Very well, then. But I have done something very bad, and I shall never have peace until I have confided it all to you. You are so very good, Mabel. I wish I could be as good as you are."
Mabel was about to interrupt me, but I prevented her, and continued:
"Last night, as I was going home from your house, the moonlight was so strangely airy and beautiful, and without quite intending to do it, I found myself taking a walk through the gorge. There I saw some curious little lights dancing over the ground, and I remembered the story of the peasant who had caught the gnome. And do you know what I did?"
Mabel was beginning to look apprehensive.
"No, I can't imagine what you did," she whispered.
"Well, I lifted my cane, struck at one of the lights, and, before I knew it, there lay a live gnome on the ground, kicking with his small legs."
"Jamie! Jamie!" cried Mabel, springing up and gazing at me, as if she thought I had gone mad.
Then there was an unwelcome shuffling of feet in the hall, the door was opened, and the professor entered with the doctor.
"Papa, papa!" exclaimed Mabel, turning to her father. "Do you know what Jamie says? He says he saw a gnome last night in the gorge, and that—"
"Yes, I did!" cried I, excitedly, and sprang up to seize my hat. "If nobody will believe me, I needn't stay here any longer. And if you doubt what I have been saying, I can show you—"
"My dear sir," said the doctor.
"My dear boy," chimed in the professor, and seized me round the waist to prevent me from escaping.
"My dear Jamie," implored Mabel, while the tears started to her eyes, "do keep quiet, do!"
The doctor and the professor now forced me back upon the sofa, and I had once more to resign myself to my fate.
"A most singular hallucination," said the professor, turning his round, good-natured face to the doctor. "A moment ago he observed that I was not a parrot, which necessarily must have been suggested by a previous hallucination that I was a parrot."
The doctor shook his head and looked grave.
"Possibly a very serious case," said he, "a case of ——," and he gave it a long Latin name, which I failed to catch. "It is well that I was called in time. We may still succeed in mastering the disease."
"Too much study?" suggested the professor. "Restless ambition? Night labor—severe application?"
The doctor nodded and tried to look wise. Mabel burst into tears, and I myself, seeing her distress, could hardly refrain from weeping. And still I could not help thinking that it was very sweet to see Mabel's tears flowing for my sake.
The doctor now sat down and wrote a number of curiously abbreviated Latin words for a prescription, and handed it to the professor, who folded it up and put it into his pocket-book.
Half an hour later, I lay in a soft bed with snowy-white curtains, in a cozy little room upstairs. The shades had been pulled down before the windows, a number of medicine bottles stood on a chair at my bedside, and I began to feel quite like an invalid—and all because I had said (what nobody could deny) that the professor was not a parrot.
IV.
I soon learned that the easiest way to recover my liberty was to offer no resistance, and to say nothing more about the gnome and the spectacles. Mabel came and sat by my bedside for a few hours every afternoon, and her father visited me regularly three times a day, felt my pulse and gave me a short lecture on moderation in study, on the evil effects of ambition, and on the dangerous tendencies of modern speculation.
The gnome's spectacles I kept hidden under my pillow, and many a time when Mabel was with me I felt a strong temptation to try their effect upon her. Was Mabel really as good and beautiful as she seemed to me? Often I had my hand on the dangerous glasses, but always the same dread came over me, and my courage failed me. That sweet, fair, beautiful face,—what could it be, if it was not what it seemed? No, no, I loved Mabel too well as she seemed, to wish to know whether she was a delusion or a reality. What good would it do me if I found out that she too was a parrot, or a goose, or any other kind of bird or beast? The fairest hope would go out of my life, and I should have little or nothing left worth living for. I must confess that my curiosity often tormented me beyond endurance, but, as I said, I could never muster courage enough either to conquer it or to yield to it. Thus, when at the end of a week I was allowed to sit up, I knew no more about Mabel's real character than I had known before. I saw that she was patient, kind-hearted, sweet-tempered,—that her comings and goings were as quiet and pleasant as those of the sunlight which now stole in unhindered and again vanished through the uncurtained windows. And, after all, had I not known that always? One thing, however, I now knew better than before, and that was that I never could love anybody as I loved Mabel, and that I hoped some time to make her my wife.
A couple of days elapsed, and then I was permitted to return to my own lonely rooms. And very dreary and desolate did they seem to me after the pleasant days I had spent, playing sick, with Mabel and the professor. I did try once or twice the effect of my spectacles on some of my friends, and always the result was astonishing. Once I put them on in church, and the minister, who had the reputation of being a very pious man, suddenly stood before me as a huge fox in gown and bands. His voice sounded like a sort of a bark, and his long snout opened and shut again in such a funny fashion that I came near laughing aloud. But, fortunately, I checked myself and looked for a moment at a couple of old maids in the pew opposite. And, whether you will believe me or not, they looked exactly like two dressed-up magpies, while the stout old gentleman next to them had the appearance of a sedate and pious turkey-cock. As he took out his handkerchief and blew his nose—I mean his bill—the laughter again came over me, and I had to stoop down in the pew and smother my merriment. An old chum of mine, who was a famous sportsman and a great favorite with the ladies, turned out to be a bull-dog, and as he adjusted his neck-tie and pulled up his collar around his thick, hairy neck, I had once more to hide my face in order to preserve my gravity.
I am afraid, if I had gone on with my observations, I should have lost my faith in many a man and woman whom I had previously trusted and admired, for they were probably not all as good and amiable as they appeared. However, I could not help asking myself, as Mabel had done, what good such a knowledge would, in the end, do me. Was it not better to believe everybody good, until convinced to the contrary, than to distrust everybody and by my suspicion do injustice to those who were really better than they seemed? After all, I thought, these spectacles are making me morbid and suspicious; they are a dangerous and useless thing to possess. I will return them to their real owner.
This, then, was my determination. A little before sunset I started for the gorge, and on my way I met a little girl playing with pebbles at the roadside. My curiosity once more possessed me. I put on the gnome's spectacles and gazed intently at the child. Strange to say no transformation occurred. I took off the glasses, rubbed them with my handkerchief, and put them on once more. The child still remained what it seemed—a child; not a feature was changed. Here, then, was really a creature that was neither more nor less than it seemed. For some inconceivable reason the tears started to my eyes; I took the little girl up in my arms and kissed her. My thoughts then naturally turned to Mabel; I knew in the depth of my heart that she, too, would have remained unchanged. What could she be that was better than her own sweet self—the pure, the beautiful, the blessed Mabel?
When the sun was well set, I sat down under the same hemlock-tree where I had first met the gnome. After half an hour's waiting I again saw the lights advancing over the ground, struck at random at one of them and the small man was once more visible. I did not seize his cap, however, but addressed him in this manner:
"Do you know, you curious Old World sprite, what scrapes your detestable spectacles brought me into? Here they are. Take them back. I don't want to see them again as long as I live."
In the next moment I saw the precious glasses in the gnome's hand, a broad, malicious grin distorted his features, and before I could say another word, he had snatched up his cap and vanished.
A few days later, Mabel, with her sweet-brier dress on, was again walking at my side along the stream in the gorge, and somehow our footsteps led us to the old willow-tree where we had had out talk about the German gnomes and fairies.
"Suppose, Jamie," said Mabel, as we seated ourselves on the grass, "that a good fairy should come to you and tell you that your highest wish should be fulfilled. What would you then ask?"
"I would ask," cried I, seizing Mabel's hand "that she would give me a good little wife, with blue eyes and golden hair, whose name should be Mabel."
Mabel blushed crimson and turned her face away from me to hide her confusion.
"You would not wish to see things as they are, then," whispered she, while the sweetest smile stole over her blushing face.
"Oh, no, no!" exclaimed I. "But what would you ask, Mabel?"
"I," answered she, "would ask the fairy to give me a husband who loved me well, if—if his name was—Jamie."
A little before supper-time we both stole on tip-toe into the professor's study. He was writing, as usual, and did not notice us. Mabel went up to his chair from behind and gently put her hands over his eyes, and asked if he could guess who it was. He, of course, guessed all the names he could think of, except the right one.
"Papa," said Mabel, at last, restoring to him once more the use of his eyes, "Jamie and I have something we want to tell you."
"And what is it, my dear?" asked the professor, turning round on his chair, and staring at us as if he expected something extraordinary.
"I don't want to say it aloud," said Mabel. "I want to whisper it."
"And I, too," echoed I.
And so we both put our mouths, one on each side, to the professor's ears, and whispered.
"But," exclaimed the old man, as soon as he could recover his breath, "you must bear in mind that life is not a play,—that—that life is not what it seems—"
"No, but Mabel is," said I.
"Is,—is what?"
"What she seems," cried I.
And then we both laughed; and the professor kissed Mabel, shook my hand, and at last all laughed.