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[Illustration: LOVELINESS]


LOVELINESS

A Story

by

ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS



  "Be my benediction said,
   With my hand upon thy head,
     Gentle fellow-creature!"
            E. B. BROWNING.







Boston and New York
Houghton, Mifflin and Company
The Riverside Press, Cambridge
1900

The Illustrations Are by Sarah S. Stilwell

Copyright, 1899, by Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward
and Houghton, Mifflin and Co.
All Rights Reserved




_For the smoke of their torment ascendeth._




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

                                                       PAGE

    LOVELINESS                              _Frontispiece_

    THE MAID STOOD LOOKING IDLY ABOUT                   14

    "TILL LOVELINESS COMES HOME"                        20

    THROUGH THE BENDING SHRUBBERY                       40




LOVELINESS.


Loveliness sat on an eider-down cushion embroidered with cherry-
puppies on a pearl satin cover. The puppies had gold eyes. They were
drinking a saucer of green milk. Loveliness wore a new necktie, of
cherry, a shade or two brighter than the puppies, and a pearl-gray, or
one might call it a silver-gray jacket. He was sitting in the broad
window sill, with his head tipped a little, thoughtfully, towards the
left side, as the heads of nervous people are said to incline. He was
dreamily watching the street, looking for any one of a few friends of
his who might pass by, and for the letter-carrier, who was somewhat
late.

Loveliness had dark, brilliant eyes, remarkably alert, but reflective
when in repose. Part of their charm lay in the fact that one must watch
for their best expression; for Loveliness wore bangs. He had a small and
delicate nose, not guiltless of an aristocratic tip, with a suspicion of
a sniff at the inferior orders of society. In truth, Loveliness was an
aristocrat to the end of his tongue, which curled daintily against his
opalescent teeth. At this moment it lay between his teeth, and hung
forward as if he held a roseleaf in his lips; and this was the final
evidence of his birth and breeding.

For Loveliness was a little dog; a silver Yorkshire, blue of blood and
delicately reared,--a tiny creature, the essence of tenderness; set,
soul and body, to one only tune. To love and to be beloved,--that was
his life. He knew no other, nor up to this time could he conceive of any
other; for he was as devotedly beloved as he was passionately loving.
His brain was in his heart. In saying this one does not question the
quality of the brain, any more than one does in saying a similar thing
of a woman. Indeed, considered as an intellect, his was of the highest
order known to his race. Loveliness would have been interesting as a
psychological study, had he not been absorbing as an affectional
occupation. His family and friends often said, "How clever!" but not
until after they had said, "How dear he is!" The order of precedence in
this summary of character is the most enviable that can be experienced
by human beings. But the dog took it as a matter of course.

This little creature loved a number of people on a sliding scale of
intimacy, carefully guarded, as the intimacies of the high-born usually
are; but one he loved first, most, best of all, and profoundly. I have
called him Loveliness because it was the pet name, the "little name,"
given to him by this person. In point of fact, he answered to a variety
of appellations, more or less recognized by society; of these the most
lawful and the least agreeable to himself was Mop. It was a disputed
point whether this were an ancestral name, or whether he had received it
from the dog store, whence he had emerged at the beginning of
history,--the shaggiest, scrubbiest, raggedest, wildest little terrier
that ever boasted of a high descent.

People of a low type, those whose imagination was bounded by menial
similes, or persons of that too ready inclination to the humorous which
fails to consider the possible injustice or unkindness that it may
involve, had in Mop's infancy found a base pleasure in attaching to him
such epithets as window-washer, scrubbing-brush, feather-duster, and