The Green Mouse
a rather narrow escape; and nothing more serious than paternal
displeasure was likely to be visited upon her.
Which comforted her to an extent that brought a return of appetite; and
she rang for luncheon, and ate it with the healthy nonchalance usually so
characteristic of her and her sisters.
"Now," she reflected, "I'll have to wait an hour for my bath"--one of the
inculcated principles of domestic hygiene. So, rising, she strolled
across the gymnasium, casting about for something interesting to do.
She looked out of the back windows. In New York the view from back
windows is not imposing.
Tiring of the inartistic prospect she sauntered out and downstairs to see
what her maid might be about. Bowles was sewing; Sybilla looked on for a
while with languid interest, then, realizing that a long day of
punishment was before her, that she deserved it, and that she ought to
perform some act of penance, started contritely for the library with
resolute intentions toward Henry James.
As she entered she noticed that the bookshelves, reaching part way to the
ceiling, were shrouded in sheets. Also she encountered a pair of
sawhorses overlaid with boards, upon which were rolls of green flock
paper, several pairs of shears, a bucket of paste, a large, flat brush, a
knife and a T-square.
"The paper hanger man," she said. "He's gone to lunch. I'll have time to
seize on Henry James and flee."
Now Henry James, like some other sacred conventions, was, in that
library, a movable feast. Sometimes he stood neatly arranged on one
shelf, sometimes on another. There was no counting on Henry.
Sybilla lifted the sheets from the face of one case and peered closer.
Henry was not visible. She lifted the sheets from another case; no Henry;
only G.P.R., in six dozen rakish volumes.
Sybilla peeped into a third case. Then a very unedifying thing occurred.
Surely, surely, this was Sybilla's disobedient day. She saw a forbidden
book glimmering in old, gilded leather--she saw its classic back turned
mockingly toward her--the whole allure of the volume was impudent, dog-
eared, devil-may-care-who-reads-me.
She took it out, replaced it, looked hard, hard for Henry, found him not,
glanced sideways at the dog-eared one, took a step sideways.
"I'll just see where it was printed," she said to herself, drawing out
the book and backing off hastily--so hastily that she came into collision
with the sawhorse table, and the paste splashed out of the bucket.
But Sybilla paid no heed; she was examining the title page of old Dog-
ear: a rather wonderful title page, printed in fascinating red and black
with flourishes.
"I'll just see whether--" And the smooth, white fingers hesitated; but
she had caught a glimpse of an ancient engraving on the next page--a very
quaint one, that held her fascinated.
"I wonder----"
She turned the next page. The first paragraph of the famous classic began
deliciously. After a few moments she laughed, adding to herself: "I can't
see what harm----"
There was no harm. Her father had meant another book; but Sybilla did not
know that.
"I'll just glance through it to--to--be sure that I mustn't read it."
She laid one hand on the paper hanger's table, vaulted up sideways, and,
seated on the top, legs swinging, buried herself in the book, unconscious
that the overturned paste was slowly fastening her to the spattered table
top.
An hour later, hearing steps on the landing, she sprang--that is, she
went through all the graceful motions of springing lightly to the floor.
But she had not budged an inch. No Gorgon's head could have consigned her
to immovability more hopeless.
Restrained from freedom by she knew not what, she made one frantic and
demoralized effort--and sank back in terror at the ominous tearing sound.
She was glued irrevocably to the table.
XIII
THE CROWN PRINCE
_Wherein the Green Mouse Squeaks_
A few minutes later the paper hanging young man entered, swinging an
empty dinner pail and halted in polite surprise before a flushed young
girl in full fencing costume, who sat on his operating table, feet
crossed, convulsively hugging a book to the scarlet heart embroidered on
her plastron.
"I--hope you don't mind my sitting here," she managed to say. "I wanted
to watch the work."
"By all means," he said pleasantly. "Let me get you a chair----"
"No, thank you. I had rather sit th-this way. Please begin and don't mind
if I watch you."
The young man appeared to be perplexed.
"I'm afraid," he ventured, "that I may require that table for cutting
and----"
"Please--if you don't mind--begin to paste. I am in-intensely interested
in p-pasting--I like to w-watch p-paper p-pasted on a w-wall."
Her small teeth chattered in spite of her; she strove to control her
voice--strove to collect her wits.
He stood irresolute, rather astonished, too.
"I'm sorry," he said, "but----"
"_Please_ paste; won't you?" she asked.
"Why, I've got to have that table to paste on----"
"Then d-don't think of pasting. D-do anything else; cut out some strips.
I am so interested in watching p-paper hangers cut out things--"
"But I need the table for that, too----"
"No, you don't. You can't be a--a very skillful w-workman if you've got
to use your table for everything----"
He laughed. "You are quite right; I'm not a skillful paper hanger."
"Then," she said, "I am surprised that you came here to paper our
library, and I think you had better go back to your shop and send a
competent man."
He laughed again. The paper hanger's youthful face was curiously
attractive when he laughed--and otherwise, more or less.
He said: "I came to paper this library because Mr. Carr was in a hurry,
and I was the only man in the shop. I didn't want to come. But they made
me.... I think they're rather afraid of Mr. Carr in the shop.... And this
work _must_ be finished today."
She did not know what to say; anything to keep him away from the table
until she could think clearly.
"W-why didn't you want to come?" she asked, fighting for time. "You said
you didn't want to come, didn't you?"
"Because," he said, smiling, "I don't like to hang wall paper."
"But if you are a paper hanger by trade----"
"I suppose you think me a real paper hanger?"
She was cautiously endeavoring to free one edge of her skirt; she nodded
absently, then subsided, crimsoning, as a faint tearing of cloth sounded.
"Go on," she said hurriedly; "the story of your career is _so_
interesting. You say you adore paper hanging----"
"No, I don't," he returned, chagrined. "I say I hate it."
"Why do you do it, then?"
"Because my father thinks that every son of his who finishes college
ought to be disciplined by learning a trade before he enters a
profession. My oldest brother, De Courcy, learned to be a blacksmith; my
next brother, Algernon, ran a bakery; and since I left Harvard I've been
slapping sheets of paper on people's walls----"
"Harvard?" she repeated, bewildered.
"Yes; I was 1907."
"_You!_"
He looked down at his white overalls, smiling.
"Does that astonish you, Miss Carr?--you are Miss Carr, I suppose----"
"Sybilla--yes--we're--we're triplets," she stammered.
"The beauti--the--the Carr triplets! And you are one of them?" he
exclaimed, delighted.
"Yes." Still bewildered, she sat there, looking at him. How
extraordinary! How strange to find a Harvard man pasting paper! Dire
misgivings flashed up within her.
"Who are you?" she asked tremulously. "Would you mind telling me your
name. It--it isn't--_George!_"
He looked up in pleased surprise:
"So you know who I am?"
"N-no. But--it isn't George--is it?"
"Why, yes----"
"O-h!" she breathed. A sense of swimming faintness enveloped her: she
swayed; but an unmistakable ripping noise brought her suddenly to
herself.
"I am afraid you are tearing your skirt somehow," he said anxiously. "Let
me----"
"No!"
The desperation of the negative approached violence, and he involuntarily
stepped back.
For a moment they faced one another; the flush died out on her cheeks.
"If," she said, "your name actually is George, this--this is the most--
the most terrible punishment--" She closed her eyes with her fingers as
though to shut out some monstrous vision.
"What," asked the amazed young man, "has my name to do with----"
Her hands dropped from her eyes; with horror she surveyed him, his paste-
spattered overalls, his dingy white cap, his dinner pail.
"I--I _won't_ marry you!" she stammered in white desperation. "I _won't!_
If you're not a paper hanger you look like one! I don't care whether
you're a Harvard man or not--whether you're playing at paper hanging or
not--whether your name is George or not--I won't marry you--I won't! I
_won't!_"
With the feeling that his senses were rapidly evaporating the young man
sat down dizzily, and passed a paste-spattered but well-shaped hand
across his eyes.
Sybilla set her lips and looked at him.
"I don't suppose," she said, "that you understand what I am talking
about, but I've got to tell you at once; I can't stand this sort of
thing."
"W-what sort of thing?" asked the young man, feebly.
"Your being here in this house--with me----"
"I'll be very glad to go----"
"Wait! _That_ won't do any good! You'll come back!"
"N-no, I won't----"
"Yes, you will. Or I--I'll f-follow you----"
"What?"
"One or the other! We can't help it, I tell you. _You_ don't understand,
but I do. And the moment I knew your name was George----"
"What the deuce has that got to do with anything?" he demanded, turning
red in spite of his amazement.
"Waves!" she said passionately, "psychic waves! I--somehow--knew that
he'd be named George----"
"Who'd be named George?"
"_He!_ The--man... And if I ever--if you ever expect me to--to c-care for
a man all over overalls----"
"But I don't--Good Heavens!--I don't expect you to care for--for
overalls----"
"Then why do you wear them?" she asked in tremulous indignation.
The young man, galvanized, sprang from his chair and began running about,
taking little, short, distracted steps. "Either," he said, "I need mental
treatment immediately, or I'll wake up toward morning.... I--don't know
what you're trying to say to me. I came here to--to p-paste----"
"That machine sent you!" she said. "The minute I got a spark you
started----"
"Do you think I'm a motor? Spark! Do you think I----"
"Yes, I do. You couldn't help it; I know it was my own fault, and this--
_this_ is the dreadful punishment--g-glued to a t-table top--with a man
named George----"
"What!!!"
"Yes," she said passionately, "everything disobedient I have done has
brought lightning retribution. I was forbidden to go into the laboratory;
I disobeyed and--you came to hang wall paper! I--I took a b-book--which I
had no business to take, and F-fate glues me to your horrid table and
holds me fast till a man named George comes in...."
Flushed, trembling, excited, she made a quick and dramatic gesture of
despair; and a ripping sound rent the silence.
"_Are you pasted to that table?_" faltered the young man, aghast.
"Yes, I am. And it's utterly impossible for you to aid me in the
slightest, except by pretending to ignore it."
"But you--you can't remain there!"
"I can't help remaining here," she said hotly, "until you go."
"Then I'd better----"
"No! You shall _not_ go! I--I won't have you go away--disappear somewhere
in the city. Certainty is dreadful enough, but it's better than the awful
suspense of knowing you are somewhere in the world, and are sure to come
back sometime----"