It was a pleasant room, one window looking down the driveway, and the other leading forth to a square balcony that topped the little porch of the side entrance.  There were lambrequins of dark blue with fringe that always caught in the shutters, and a bedroom suite of mahogany that had come down from the original John Watkins’s aunt, and had been polished by her descendants so faithfully that its various surfaces shone like mirrors.  Over the bed hung a tent drapery of chintz; over the washstand hung a crayon done by Arethusa in her infancy—­the same representing a lady engaged in the pleasant and useful occupation of spinning wheat with a hand composed of five fingers, and no thumb.  In the corner stood a cheval-glass which Jack had seen shrink steadily for years until now it could no longer reflect his shoulders unless he retired back for some two yards or more.  There was a delectable closet to the room, all painted white inside, with shelves and cupboards and little bins for shoes and waste paper and soiled clothes.

Oh! it was really an altogether delightful place in which to abide, and the pity was that its owner had spent so little time therein of late years.

To-night—­returning to the scene of many childish and boyish meditations—­ Jack placed his lamp upon the nightstand at the head of the bed and sat himself down on a chair near by.

It was late—­quite midnight—­for he and Aunt Mary’s new maid had talked long and freely ere they separated at last.  From his room he could hear the little faint sounds below stairs, that told of her final preparations for Lucinda’s morning eye, and he rested quiet until all else was quiet and then leaned back upon the chair’s hind legs and, tipping slowly to and fro in that position, tried to see just what he had better do the first thing on the following day.

[Image:  Illustration 7]

“’Yesterday I played poker until I didn’t know a blue chip from a white
one.’”

It was a riddle with a vengeance.  It is so easy to say “I’ll cut that Gordian knot!” and then pack one’s tooth-brush and start off unknotting, but it is quite another matter when one comes face to face with the problem and is met by the “buts” of those who have previously been essaying to disentangle it.

“She won’t let me go,” Mrs. Rosscott had declared, “she won’t consider it for a minute.”

“But she must,” Jack had declared on his side.  “My dearest, you can’t stay and play maid to Aunt Mary indefinitely, and you know that as well as I do.”

“Yes, I know that,” the whilom Janice then murmured.  “It’s getting to be an awful question.  They want me to come home for Thanksgiving.  They think that I’ve been at the rest-cure long enough.”

Jack had laughed a bit just there, and then he suddenly ceased laughing and frowned a good deal instead.

“You were crying when I came,” he said.  “The truth is you are working yourself to death and getting completely used up.”