Produced by Al Haines [Frontispiece: "'I HAVE A PRESENT FOR YOU--A SISTER'" See p. 45] DR. LAVENDAR'S PEOPLE BY MARGARET DELAND AUTHOR OF "OLD CHESTER TALES" ILLUSTRATED BY LUCIUS HITCHCOCK NEW YORK AND LONDON HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS 1903 Copyright, 1903, by HARPER & BROTHERS. _All rights reserved._ Published October, 1903. TO DR. FRANCIS B. HARRINGTON These Stories are Dedicated CONTENTS The Apotheosis of the Reverend Mr. Spangler The Note The Grasshopper and the Ant Amelia "An Exceeding High Mountain" At the Stuffed-Animal House ILLUSTRATIONS "I HAVE A PRESENT FOR YOU--A SISTER'" . . . . . . _Frontispiece_ "DAVID'S HEAD SWAM" "SHE ALWAYS CAME INTO THE LIBRARY TO SAY GOOD-NIGHT TO HIM" "LURCHED FORWARD INTO A CHAIR, BREATHING LOUDLY" "MRS. BARKLEY ROSE, TAPPING THE TABLE WITH ALARMING LOUDNESS" "MISS LYDIA, WATCHING HIM, GREW PALER AND PALER" "THERE SHE TURNED AND LOOKED BACK" "THOMAS DILWORTH GOT ON HIS FEET AND SWORE" "'WHAT IS THE NAME OF THE KIND PERSON?'" "SHE KNELT DOWN, AS USUAL, AT THE BIG CHINTZ-COVERED WINGED CHAIR" MISS HARRIET WAS LEANING FORWARD "'A HAPPY SLEEP,' MISS ANNIE REPEATED" THE APOTHEOSIS OF THE REVEREND MR. SPANGLER I Miss Ellen Baily kept school in the brick basement of her old frame house on Main Street. The children used to come up a flagstone path to the side door, and then step down two steps into an entry. Two rooms opened on this entry; in one the children sat at small, battered desks and studied; in the other Miss Baily heard their lessons, sitting at a table covered with a red cloth, which had a white Grecian fret for a border and smelled of crumbs. On the wall behind her was a faded print of "Belshazzar's Feast"; in those days this was probably the only feasting the room ever saw--although on a thin-legged sideboard there were two decanters (empty) and a silver-wire cake-basket which held always three apples. Both rooms looked out on the garden--the garden and, in fine weather, _Mr. David Baily!_ ... Ah, me--what it was, in the dreary stretches of mental arithmetic, to look across the flower-beds and see Mr. David--tall and dark and melancholy--pacing up and down, sometimes with a rake, oftener with empty hands; always with vague, beautiful eyes fixed on some inner vision of heart-broken memory. Miss Ellen's pupils were confident of this vision because of a tombstone in the burial-ground which recorded the death of Maria Hastings, at the romantic age of seventeen; and, as everybody in Old Chester knew, Mr. Baily had been in love with this same seventeen-year-old Maria. To be sure, it was thirty years ago; but that does not make any difference, "_in real love_," as any school-girl can tell you. So, when David Baily paced up and down the garden paths or sat in the sunshine under the big larch we all knew that he was thinking of his bereavement.