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                                  THEO.

                        _A SPRIGHTLY LOVE STORY._

                     BY MRS. FRANCES HODGSON BURNETT

AUTHOR OF "KATHLEEN," "PRETTY POLLY PEMBERTON," "LINDSAY'S LUCK," "IN
CONNECTION WITH THE DE WILLOUGHBY CLAIM," "THE MAKING OF A MARCHIONESS,"
"THE METHODS OF LADY WALDERHURST," ETC.


NEW YORK
HURST & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1877
By T. B. PETERSON & BROTHERS.




MRS. BURNETT'S NOVELETTES.


_Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett is one of the most charming among American
writers. There is a crisp and breezy freshness about her delightful
novelettes that is rarely found in contemporaneous fiction, and a close
adherence to nature, as well, that renders them doubly delicious. Of all
Mrs. Burnett's romances and shorter stories those which first attracted
public attention to her wonderful gifts are still her best. She has done
more mature work, but never anything half so pleasing and enjoyable.
These masterpieces of Mrs. Burnett's genius are all love stories of the
brightest, happiest and most entertaining description; lively, cheerful
love stories in which the shadow cast is infinitesimally small compared
with the stretch of sunlight; and the interest is always maintained at
full head without apparent effort and without resorting to the
conventional and hackneyed devices of most novelists, devices that the
experienced reader sees through at once. No more sprightly novel than
"Theo" could be desired, and a sweeter or more beautiful romance than
"Kathleen" does not exist in print, while "Pretty Polly Pemberton"
possesses besides its sprightliness a special interest peculiar to
itself, and "Miss Crespigny" would do honor to the pen of any novelist,
no matter how celebrated. "Lindsay's Luck," "A Quiet Life," "The Tide on
the Moaning Bar" and "Jarl's Daughter" are all worthy members of the
same collection of Mrs. Burnett's earlier, most original, best and
freshest romances. Everybody should read these exceptionally bright,
clever and fascinating novelettes, for they occupy a niche by themselves
in the world's literature and are decidedly the most agreeable, charming
and interesting books that can be found anywhere._




CONTENTS.



I. PREPARING FOR A JOURNEY

II. THE ARRIVAL

III. THE MEETING

IV. THEO'S DIARY

V. THE SEPARATION

VI. THEO GOES TO PARIS

VII. "PARTING IS SWEET SORROW"

VIII. THEO'S FIRST TROUBLE

IX. WHAT COMES OF IT ALL




"THEO."




CHAPTER I.

PREPARING FOR A JOURNEY.


A heavy curtain of yellow fog rolled and drifted over the waste of
beach, and rolled and drifted over the sea, and beneath the curtain the
tide was coming in at Downport, and two pair of eyes were watching it.
Both pair of eyes watched it from the same place, namely, from the
shabby sitting-room of the shabby residence of David North, Esq.,
lawyer, and both watched it without any motive, it seemed, unless that
the dull gray waves and their dull moaning were not out of accord with
the watchers' feelings. One pair of eyes--a youthful, discontented black
pair--watched it steadily, never turning away, as their owner stood in
the deep, old-fashioned window, with both elbows resting upon the broad
sill; but the other pair only glanced up now and then, almost furtively,
from the piece of work Miss Pamela North, spinster, held in her slender,
needle-worn fingers.

There had been a long silence in the shabby sitting-room for some
time--and there was not often silence there. Three rampant,
strong-lunged boys, and as many talkative school-girls, made the house
of David North, Esq., rather a questionable paradise. But to-day, being
half-holiday, the boys were out on the beach digging miraculous
sand-caves, and getting up miraculous piratical battles and excursions
with the bare-legged urchins so numerous in the fishermen's huts; and
Joanna and Elinor had been absent all day, so the room left to Theo and
her elder sister was quiet for once.

It was Miss Pamela herself who broke the stillness. "Theo," she said,
with some elder-sister-like asperity, "it appears to me that you might
find something better to do than to stand with your arms folded, as you
have been doing for the last half hour. There is a whole basketful of
the boys' socks that need mending and--"

"Pam!" interrupted Theo, desperately, turning over her shoulder a face
more like the face of some young Spanish gipsy than that of a poor
English solicitor's daughter. "Pam, I should really like to know if life
is ever worth having, if everybody's life is like ours, or if there are
really such people as we read of in books."

"You have been reading some ridiculous novel again," said Pamela,
sententiously. "If you would be a little more sensible, and less
romantic, Theodora, it would be a great deal better for all of us. What
have you been reading?"

The capable gipsy face turned to the window again half-impatiently.

"I have been reading nothing to-day," was the answer. "I should think
you knew that--on Saturday, with everything to do, and the shopping to
attend to, and mamma scolding every one because the butcher's bill can't
be paid. I was reading Jane Eyre, though, last night. Did you ever read
Jane Eyre, Pamela?"

"I always have too much to do in attending to my duty," said Pamela,
"without wasting my time in that manner. I should never find time to
read Jane Eyre in twenty years. I wish I could."

"I wish you could, too," said Theo, meditatively. "I wish there was no
such thing as duty. Duty always appears to me to be the very thing we
don't want to do."

"Just at present, it is your duty to attend to those socks of Ralph and
Arthur's," put in Pamela, dryly. "Perhaps you had better see to it at
once, as tea will be ready soon, and you will have to cut bread for the
children."

The girl turned away from the window with a sigh. Her discussions on
subjects of this kind always ended in the same unsatisfactory manner;
and really her young life was far from being a pleasant one. As the next
in age to Pamela, though so many years lay between them, a hundred petty
cares fell on her girlish shoulders, and tried her patience greatly with
their weight, sometimes. And in the hard family struggle for everyday
necessities there was too much of commonplace reality to admit of much
poetry. The wearisome battling with life's needs had left the mother, as
it leaves thousands of women, haggard, careworn, and not too smooth in
disposition. There was no romance about her. She had fairly forgotten
her girlhood, it seemed to lie so far behind; and even the unconquerable
mother-love, that gave rise to her anxieties, had a touch of hardness
about it. And Pamela had caught something of the sharp, harassed spirit
too. But Theo had an odd secret sympathy for Pamela, though her sister
never suspected it. Pamela had a love-story, and in Theo's eyes this one
touch of forlorn romance was the silver lining to many clouds. Ten years
ago, when Pamela had been a pretty girl, she had had a lover--poor
Arthur Brunwalde--Theo always mentally designated him; and only a week
before her wedding-day, death had ended her love-story forever. Poor
Pamela! was Theo's thought: to have loved like Jane Eyre, and Agnes
Wickfield, and Lord Bacon, and to have been so near release from the
bread-and-butter cutting, and squabbling, and then to have lost all.
Poor Pamela, indeed! So the lovely, impulsive, romance-loving younger
sister cherished an odd interest in Pamela's thin, sharp face, and
unsympathizing voice, and in picturing the sad romance of her youth, was
always secretly regardful of the past in her trials of the present.

As she turned over the socks in the basket, she glanced up now and then
at Pamela's face, which was bent over her work. It had been a pretty
face, but now there were faint lines upon it here and there; the
features once delicate were sharpened, the blue eyes were faded, and the
blonde hair faded also. It was a face whose youth had been its beauty,
and its youth had fled with Pamela North's happiness. Her life had ended
in its prime; nay, not ended, for the completion had never come--it was
to be a work unfinished till its close. Poor Arthur Brunwalde!

A few more silent stitches, and then the work slipped from Theo's
fingers into her lap, and she lifted her big, inconsistent eyes again.

"Pam," she said, "were you ever at Lady Throckmorton's?"

A faint color showed itself on Pamela's faded face.

"Yes," she answered, sharply, "I was once. What nonsense is running in
your mind now, for goodness sake?"

Theo flushed up to her forehead, no half flush; she actually glowed all
over, her eyes catching a light where her delicate dark skin caught the
dusky red.

"Don't be cross, Pam," she said, appealingly. "I can't help it. The
letter she sent to mamma made me think of it. Oh, Pam! if I could only
have accepted the invitation."

"But you can't," said Pam, concisely. "So you may as well let the matter
rest."

"I know I can't," Theo returned, her quaint resignation telling its own
story of previous disappointments. "I have nothing to wear, you know,
and, of course, I couldn't go there, of all places in the world, without
something nice."

There was another silence after this. Theo had gone back