THE CANDLE CALLED PATIENCE.

The burning of the house completely prostrated Mrs. Clementine Churchill Chadwick Greenwood, who, it is true, had the actual shock of the conflagration to upset her nervous system, though she suffered no financial loss.

Mr. Greenwood was heard to remark that he wished he could have foreseen that the house would burn down, for now he should have to move anyway, and if he had known that a few months before, why—­

Here the sentence always ended mysteriously, and the neighbors finished it as they liked.

The calamity affected Polly, on the other hand, very much like a tonic.  She felt the necessity of “bracing” to meet the fresh responsibilities that seemed waiting for her in the near future; and night and day, in sleeping and waking, resting and working, a plan was formulating itself in the brain just roused from its six months’ apathy,—­a novel, astonishing, enchanting, revolutionary plan, which she bided her time to disclose.

The opportunity came one evening after dinner, when Mrs. Bird, and her brother, Edgar and herself, were gathered in the library.

The library was a good place in which to disclose plans, or ask advice, or whisper confidences.  The great carved oak mantel held on the broad space above the blazing logs the graven motto, “Esse Quod Opto.”  The walls were lined with books from floor half-way to ceiling, and from the tops of the cases Plato, Socrates, Marcus Aurelius, and the Sage of Concord looked down with benignant wisdom.  The table in the centre was covered with a methodical litter of pamphlets and magazines, and a soft light came from the fire and from two tall, shaded lamps.

Mr. Bird, as was his wont, leaned back in his leather chair, puffing delicate rings of smoke into the air.  Edgar sat by the centre table, idly playing with a paper-knife.  Mrs. Bird sat in her low rocking-chair with a bit of fancy-work, and Polly, on the hearth rug, leaned cosily back against her Fairy Godmother’s knees.

The clinging tendrils in Polly’s nature, left hanging so helplessly when her mother was torn away, reached out more and more to wind themselves about lovely Mrs. Bird, who, notwithstanding her three manly sons, had a place in her heart left sadly vacant by the loss of her only daughter.

Polly broke one of the pleasant silences.  An open fire makes such delightful silences, if you ever noticed.  When you sit in a room without it, the gaps in the conversation make everybody seem dull; the last comer rises with embarrassment and thinks he must be going, and you wish that some one would say the next thing and keep the ball rolling.  The open fire arranges all these little matters with a perfect tact and grace all its own.  It is acknowledged to be the centre of attraction, and the people gathered about it are only supernumeraries.  It blazes and crackles and snaps cheerily, the logs break and fall, the coals glow and fade and glow again, and the dull man can always poke the fire if his wit desert him.  Who ever feels like telling a precious secret over a steam-heater?