The Book-house still stands among its walnuts in Berrytown.  But a shrewd young fellow from New York has charge of it now, who deals principally in school-books and publications relative to Reforms and raspberries.  Old Peter Guinness still holds an interest in it, although his chief business is that of special agent for libraries in buying rare books and pamphlets.  He comes down for two or three weeks in winter to look into matters.  But since his wife died he makes his home in Delaware with his son, who married, as all Berrytown knows, Kitty Vogdes after she behaved so shamefully to Mr. Muller.

Mrs. Guinness died in high good-humor with her son-in-law.  “Doctor McCall,” she assured her neighbors, “was exactly the man she should have chosen for Catharine.  She had known him from a boy, and knew that his high social position and wealth were only his deserts.  A member—­vestryman indeed—­of St. Luke’s Church, the largest in Sussex county.”

The farm-people in the sleepy, sunny Delaware neighborhood have elected Kitty a chief favorite.  “A gentle, good-natured little woman, with no opinions of her own.  A bit too fond of dress perhaps, and a silly, doting mother, but the most neighborly, lovable creature alive, after all.”

Miss Muller was down in St. George’s lecturing last fall, and made her mark, as she always does.  But the Guinness men were now hopelessly conservative.  She made her home with Kitty.

“A fine woman,” old Peter said the morning after she was gone.

“Never knew a woman with a finer mind,” said Hugh.  “Nor many men.”

“She nurses that dog as if it were a baby,” said Kitty sharply.  “It’s silly!  It’s disgusting!”

Peter twanged his bow on the porch, looking down over the great farm-slopes stretching away in the morning light.

“We have everything to make life good to us, Hugh,” he said after Kitty had gone.  “And the best thing, to my notion, is an old-fashioned woman in the house, with no notion of ruling, like that Muller girl and her set.”

Hugh was romping with his boy:  “Do you know your first business in this world, sir?  To take care of your mother,” glancing at the garden, where Kitty, in her pretty white dress, was clipping chrysanthemums.

She rules him and the house and their lives absolutely, with but little regard for justice.  But he has never suspected it.  She hardly knows herself that she does it.

REBECCA HARDING DAVIS.

STRANGE SEA INDUSTRIES AND ADVENTURES.