



Produced by Al Haines










[Frontispiece: "YOU ARE SO GENEROUS TO ME" (page 24)]





AVERY


_By Elizabeth Stuart Phelps_




BOSTON AND NEW YORK

HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY

The Riverside Press, Cambridge

1902




COPYRIGHT, 1901, BY HARPER & BROS.

COPYRIGHT, 1902, BY ELIZABETH STUART PHELPS WARD

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED


_Published October, 1902_




_Avery_ originally appeared as a serial in _Harper's Magazine_ under
the title of _His Wife_.




AVERY



PART I

"Oh, Pink!  Mother _can't_ lift you....  I would if I could....  Yes, I
know I used to--

"Molly, take the baby.  Couldn't you amuse him, somehow?  Perhaps, if
you tried hard, you could keep him still.  When he screams so, it seems
to hit me--here.  It makes it harder to breathe.  He cried'most all
night.  And if you could contrive to keep Pink, too--

"What is it, Kate?  You'll have to manage without me this morning.
Pick up anything for luncheon--I don't care.  I couldn't eat.  You can
warm over that mutton for yourselves.  We must keep the bills down.
They were too large last month.  Order a grouse for Mr. Avery.  He says
he will dine at home to-night--

"There's the telephone!  Somebody answer it.  I can't get down,
myself....  Is it Mr. Avery?... Wants me?... I don't see how I
can....  Yes.  Hold the wire.  I 'll try--

"Did you speak to me, Molly?... No, I'm not feeling any worse.  It's
only getting up the stairs, and... something that tired me a little.
I don't want Dr. Thorne.  I can't call the doctor so often.  I'm no
worse than... I sometimes... am.  It's only that I cannot breathe....
Molly!  _Molly_!  Quick, Molly!  The window!  Air!"

As Molly dashed the window up, Mrs. Avery's head fell back upon the
pillows of the lounge.  They were blue pillows, and her blanching cheek
took a little reflection from the color.  But she was not ghastly; she
never was.  At the lowest limit of her strength she seemed to challenge
death with an indomitable vitality.

There was a certain surprise in the discovery that so blond a being
could have so much of it.  She was very fair--blue of eye, yellow of
hair, pearly of skin; but all her coloring was warm and rich; when she
was well, it was an occupation to admire her ear, her cheek, her
throat; and when she was ill her eye conquered.  Every delicate trait
and feature of her defied her fate, except her mouth; this had begun to
take on a pitiful expression.  The doctor's blazing eye flashed on it
when he was summoned hastily.  It had become a symptom to him, and was
usually the first one of which he took note.

Dr. Esmerald Thorne had the preoccupations of his eminence, and his
patients waited their turns with that undiscouraged endurance which is
the jest and the despair of less-distinguished physicians.  Women took
their crochet work to his office, and men bided their time with gnawed
mustache and an unnatural interest in the back-number magazines upon
his table.  Indifferent ailments received his belated attention, and to
certain patients he came when he got ready.  Mrs. Avery's was not one
of these cases.

When Molly's tumultuous telephone call reached him that dav, it found
him at the hospital, sewing up an accident.  He drew the thread through
the stitch, handed the needle to the house surgeon, who was standing
by, and ran downstairs.  The hospital was two miles from Marshall
Avery's house.  Dr. Thorne's horse