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[Illustration: "HE TOOK OUT HIS EYEGLASS TO STUDY IT."]




BOSTON NEIGHBOURS
IN TOWN AND OUT

BY AGNES BLAKE POOR

[Illustration]

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
The Knickerbocker Press
1898


COPYRIGHT, 1898
BY
G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

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CONTENTS

                                                                    PAGE
  OUR TOLSTOI CLUB                                                     1
  A LITTLE FOOL                                                       41
  WHY I MARRIED ELEANOR                                               83
  THE STORY OF A WALL-FLOWER                                         123
  POOR MR. PONSONBY                                                  187
  MODERN VENGEANCE                                                   239
  THREE CUPS OF TEA                                                  274
  THE TRAMPS' WEDDING                                                300

       *       *       *       *       *

The author and the publishers desire to make acknowledgment to the
publishers of the _Century Magazine_ and of the _New England Magazine_
for their courtesy in permitting the re-issue of certain stories which
were originally published in these periodicals.




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OUR TOLSTOI CLUB


I should be glad to tell a story if I only knew one, but I don't. Some
people say that one experience is as interesting as another, and that
any real life is worth hearing about; but I think it must make some
little difference who the person is. But if I really must tell one, and
since you all have told yours, and such nice ones, and anything is
better than nothing when we are kept in all the morning by a pouring
rain, with nothing to do, because we came only for a week, and did not
expect it to rain, I will try and tell you about our Tolstoi Club,
because that was rather like a story--at least it might have been like
one if things had turned out a little differently.

You know I live in a suburb of Boston, and a very charming, delightful
one it is. I cannot call it by its real name, because I am going to be
so very personal; so I will call it "Babyland," which indeed people
often do in fun. There never was such a place for children. The
population is mostly under seven years old, for it was about seven years
ago that young married people began to move into it in such numbers,
because it is so healthy; but it was always a great place for them even
when it was small. The old inhabitants are mostly grandfathers and
grandmothers now, and enjoy it very much; but they usually go into town
in the winter, with such unmarried children as they have left, to get a
little change; for there is no denying that there is a sameness about
it--the sidewalks are crowded with perambulators every pleasant day, and
at our parties the talk is apt to run too much on nursery-maids, and
milkmen and their cows, and drains, to be very interesting to those who
have not learned how terribly important such things are. So in winter
we--I mean the young married couples, of whom I am half a one--are left
pretty much to our own devices.

Though we are all so devoted to our infant families, we are not so much
so as to give up all rational pleasures or intellectual tastes; we could
not live so near Boston, you know, and do that. Our husbands go into
town every day to make money, and we go in every few days to spend it,
and in the evenings, if they are not too tired, we sometimes make them
take us in to the theatres and concerts. We all have a very nice social
circle, for Babyland is fashionable as well as respectable, and we are
asked out more or less, and go out; but for real enjoyment we like our
own clubs and classes the best. We feel so safe going round in the
neighbourhood, because we are so near the children, and can be called
home any time if necessary. There is our little evening dancing-club,
which meets round at one another's houses, where we all exchange
husbands--a kind of grown-up "puss-in-the-corner"; only, as the supply
of dancing husbands is not quite equal to that of wives, we have to get
a young man or two in if we can; and for the same reason we don't ask
any girls, who, indeed, are not very eager to come. Then there is the
musical club, and the sketching-club, and we have a great many morning
clubs for the women alone, where we bring our work (and it is splendid
to get so much time to sew), and read, or are read to, and then talk
over things. Sometimes we stay to lunch, and sometimes not; and we would
have an essay club, only we have no time to write the papers.

Now, many of these clubs meet chiefly at Minnie Mason's--Mrs. Sydney
Mason's. She gets them up, and is president: you see, she has more time,
because she has no children--the only woman in Babyland who hasn't, and
I don't doubt she feels dreadfully about it. She is not strong, and has
to lie on the sofa most of the time, and that is another reason why we
meet there so often; and then she lives right in the midst of us all,
and so close to the road that we can all of us watch our children, when
they are out for their airings, very conveniently. Minnie is very kind
and sympathetic, and takes such an interest in all our affairs, and if
she is somewhat inclined to gossip about them, poor dear, it is very
natural, when she has so few of her own to think about.

Well, in the autumn before last, Minnie said we must get up a Tolstoi
Club; she said the Russians were the coming race, and Tolstoi was their
greatest writer, and the most Christian of moralists (at least she had
read so), and that everybody was talking about him, and we should be
behindhand if we could not. So we turned one of our clubs, which had
nothing particular on hand just then, into one; and, besides Tolstoi, we
read other Russian novelists, Turgenieff and--that man whose name is so
hard to pronounce, who writes all about convicts and--and other
criminals. We did not read them all, for they are very long, and we can
never get through anything long; but we hired a very nice lady
"skimmer," who ran through them, and told us the plots, and all about
the authors, and read us bits. I forget a good deal, but I remember she
said that Tolstoi was the supreme realist, and that all previous
novelists were romancers and idealists, and that he drew life just as it
was, and nobody else had ever done anything like it, except indeed the
other Russians; and then we discussed. In discussion we are very apt to
stray off to other topics, but that day I remember Bessie Milliken
saying that the Russians seemed very queer people; she supposed that if
every one said these authors were so true to life, they must be, but she
had never known such an extraordinary state of things. Just as soon as
ever people were married--if they married at all--they seemed wild to
make love to some one else, or have some one else make love to them.

"They don't seem to do so here," said Fanny Deane.

"_We_ certainly do not," said Blanche Livermore. "I think the reason
must be that we have no time. I have scarcely time to see anything of my
own husband, much less to fall in love with any one else's."

We all laughed, but we felt that it was odd. In Babyland all went on in
an orderly and respectable fashion. The gayest girls, the fastest young
men, as soon as they were married and settled there, subsided at once
into quiet, domestic ways. At our dances each of us secretly thought
her own husband the most interesting person present, and he returned the
compliment, and after a peaceful evening of passing them about we were
always very thankful to get them back to go home with. Were we, then, so
unlike the rest of humanity?

"Are we sure?" asked Minnie Mason, always prone to speculation. "It is
not likely that we are utterly different from the rest of the world. Who
knows what dark tragedies lie hidden in the recesses of the heart? Who
knows all her neighbour's secret history?" This was being rather
personal, but no one took it home, for we never minded what Minnie said;
and as many of the club were, as always occurred, detained at home by
domestic duties, we thought it might apply to one of them. But I can't
deny that we, and especially Minnie, who had a relish for what was
sensational, and was pleased to find that realistic fiction, which she
had always thought must be dull, was really exciting, felt a little
ashamed at our being so behind the age--"provincial," as Mr. James would
call it; "obsolete," as Mr. Howells is fond of saying--at Babyland