CHAPTER VI.
The stranger regarded Molly’s saucy rejoinder as the effect of an injury done to her brain by her fall from the horse, and said to himself, pityingly:
“She evidently struck upon her head and the shock has disordered her brain, but I trust the affliction will prove but momentary.”
She was sitting upright now regarding him with vexed, dark eyes when he said, smilingly:
“Since you dispute my assertion permit me to prove it. Look yonder!”
Molly turned her head and saw the handsome bay horse standing still in the road as if conscious of his misdemeanor.
Her memory came quickly back.
“Oh!” she exclaimed.
“You remember?” he rejoined.
“Yes.”
Her face and eyes looked very arch and saucy as she continued:
“I suppose you take me for an escaped lunatic?”
“Oh, no,” with a provoking smile on the handsome lips, “only a very giddy girl whose memory was temporarily obscured by her fall.”
“And you don’t like giddy girls?” Molly interrogated, with a decisive pout.
“Not—usually,” he returned with a sparkle of mischief in his eyes.
Molly sprang to her feet with considerable agility,considering that she had declared she felt as if all her bones were broken.
“Neither do I like hateful prigs!” she returned, with asperity. “So I will bid you good-evening, sir.”
Dropping him a pert little courtesy, she ran toward the horse, but as she lifted her little foot to the stirrup she found him at her elbow.
“Permit me,” he said, and lifted the light figure quickly to the saddle.
Then he detained the reins in his hands a moment.
“Do you know I was very much surprised to see a strange young lady riding this horse?” he said. “I know the horse and its owner—but—”
“Not the rider,” she finished his hesitating sentence. “Well, my name is Molly Trueheart, and I borrowed the horse from old Betsy Bell over there at the Laurens place. I will send him home in an hour. So, you see, I’m not a horse thief, although I may look like a lunatic. To tell the truth I’ve had quite a lark this evening, and I’m very anxious to get home.”
“A lark!” he repeated, with an expressive shrug, and Molly Trueheart uttered a merry, rollicking peal of laughter.
“Yes, a lark!” she said. “Oh, how horrified you look! Good-night, Mr. Prig!” and like a flash she caught the reins from his hands, touched Hero lightly with the whip, and he bounded gracefully away as if anxious to atone for the mishap of awhile ago.
The stranger stood looking after her with a smile in his violet eyes.
“What a merry little hoiden!” he uttered aloud, “and what a mercy she escaped unhurt. It was rather ludicrous to see her come flying over Hero’s head in that fashion, and landing in the dust at one’s feet!”
Still smiling, he resumed his walk toward Maple Shade, as the Laurens place was called, but before he reached the wide entrance gate of the park he was overtaken by Hero, who, on being liberated at Ferndale, had galloped rapidly back to overtake his friend.
“Good fellow!” said the gentleman, springing to the back of the delighted creature, and continuing his journey. “I hope, Hero, you have delivered our little madcap safe at home, and not flung her precipitately at the head of some other astonished pedestrian!”
Hero gave a delighted whinny which his rider interpreted as the former, which was indeed the case, for Molly Trueheart was at that moment running across the lawn at Ferndale, anxious to make her peace with old Mrs. Barry.
“I shall have to humble myself down to the ground, I know, but I’ll do it for Louise’s sake,” she muttered then. “Oh, dear, how my bones do ache! I know I’m all over black and blue from the tumbles I’ve had! I know very well I shall be as sore as a boil tomorrow, and have to stay in bed all day. Oh, what made Lou so determined on sending me here? She might have known,” dismally, “that I could not behave myself. Oh, Lordy, I do hope she’ll let me off from doing any more penance as soon as she gets my letter!”
A sudden thought of the dignified stranger she had encountered made her laugh aloud in spite of her sorry plight.
“My! what a prig he was! Handsome though,very!” she said. “I wonder who he was, the wretch? He frightened the horse, of course, or I shouldn’t have got that fall. I hope he doesn’t live in this neighborhood, for it wouldn’t do for Aunt Thalia to findout that I ran away. I must hold my peace on that point. And now to face the music!”
The hall-doors stood wide open, the light of the swinging-lamp shining on the tired, pretty face of the girl as she crept in and went softly to the door of her aunt’s sitting-room. At the same moment the tall Dutch clock in the hall loudly boomed out the hour of ten.
“Oh, I did not dream it was so late!” she muttered, and peeped around the door.
There lay her Aunt Thalia on the sofa with Ginny Ann mopping her face with camphor, and old Nancy Jane, the cook, swinging a huge turkey-wing up and down.
Molly forgot her selfish terrors in anxiety for the old lady, and rushed precipitately into the room.
“What’s the matter?” she exclaimed.
Nancy Jane and Ginny Ann squealed simultaneously:
“Lordy, Miss Lou, dat you?”
“Yes, or what’s left of me after tumbling out of the tree.” Walking up to her aunt’s side, then bending over her: “Aunt Thalia, are you sick?”
Mrs. Barry opened her eyes with a look of relief, but before she could speak Ginny Ann broke in:
“Missis almost c’azy, finkin’ you done runned away. You sartinly did gib us a skeer, chile! Ole mis’, she say jes’ now, ‘Run upsta’rs, Ginny Ann, and let dat chile out o’ dat garret. Guess she sorry for her sass now.’ And I went and foun’ dat windy wide open, and you gone. And ole mis’ flew insecha rage, umph me, as you nebber saw, and mos’ went inter de highstrikes.”
“Ginny Ann, hold your tongue, you old fool!” cried Mrs. Barry, sitting upright, with a suddenness that made her domestics reel backward in dismay. “Is that you, Louise? Where have you been, child, giving us such a scare about you?”
Something like tenderness quivered through her voice despite its acerbity, and cunning Molly took instant advantage of the situation. She dropped theatrically upon her knees.
“Oh, Aunt Thalia, the big rats in the garret frightened me almost to death!” she sobbed. “I climbed out of the window into the tree, and then a big snake scared me, and I fell out of the tree down to the ground, and—and—oh—most killed myself! And—and—it just served me right, too! I ought to have been killed for my meanness to you, Aunt Thalia! I was just as naughty as I could be, but I’m downright sorry, and I’ll try never—or, ‘hardly ever’—to do it again. Won’t you please forgive me?”
Mrs. Barry looked down keenly into the lifted face. It did look pale and pathetic, and the big eyes were positively dewy. She put out her long, withered hand, on which a priceless diamond sparkled, and gently stroked the dark head.
“Louise, I don’t know but that I ought to begyourpardon,” she said, with a gentleness that was so rare in her it made the gaping negroes stare. “I—I don’t exactly think I did right putting you in the old garret. You—you might have been killed falling out of that tree! I think we must forgive each other and do better in future.”
“Oh, thank you so much, Aunt Thalia!” Molly cried, jubilantly. She even dared press a timid kisson Mrs. Barry’s wrinkled cheek, she felt so glad that, by eating humble pie, she had saved Louise.
“Are you bruised very much, my dear?” the old lady inquired, sympathetically, and Molly responded lugubriously:
“Black and blue all over!”
Both the negro women groaned in concert at this statement, and Mrs. Barry exclaimed:
“Oh, how dreadful to think of such a fall! It’s a mercy you were not killed outright. I forgot about the rats in the garret, or I never would have shut you up there. Ginny Ann, you go upstairs with the child, and let her have a warm bath, then rub her from head to foot in arnica—fromheadtofoot; do you hear?”
“Yes, ole mis’, sartinly. Come on, Miss Lou, honey.”
“Yes, Ginny Ann. Good-night, Aunt Thalia. I’m sorry I gave you such a scare; and I’m so glad that you were good enough to forgive me,” Molly said, as she followed Ginny Ann from the room to the bath-room upstairs, where the old lady’s instructions were carried out to the letter.
“Oh, I feel so much better! Thank you, Ginny Ann,” she exclaimed, as the latter tucked her into her cool, white bed. “But I’m sorry to be so much trouble.”
“No trouble at tall, Miss Lou. I’se always been use to waiting on de Barrys. It’s my pleasure and my dooty,” Ginny Ann replied, with the elaborate politeness of the well-raised Virginia negro. Then she paused, and said, mysteriously: “Honey, doane you mine ole missis’ capers; her bark worser ’n her bite. She gwine make it up to you fo’ treatin’ you so bad.”
“Make it up to me?” said tired and sleepy Molly, drowsily; and then Ginny Ann got down on her knees by the bed and whispered the secret of the evening’s work among the trunks of finery, and of the maid’s trip into town for the summer silk.
“Lay low, honey, and doane say a word to ole missis, but sho’ as you born, she’s gwine take you off on a trip whar you’ll hab a fine time dancin’ and eberyt’ing; and I shouldn’t wonder, no, I shouldn’t, ef she marries you off to some nice young gemplum,” she concluded, exuberantly.
Molly’s head popped up from the pillow like a cork.
“Indeed she won’t then! Marry me off, indeed! I should like to see any one try it!” she blazed, indignantly.
“Hi, honey, doane you want get married?” Ginny Ann inquired, in amazement.
“No, I don’t! I hate men, every one of them—deceitfulprigs!” cried Molly, violently, adding to herself that the man she had seen tonight she hated worst of all.
Wanting to get rid of Ginny Ann, she put down her head again, pretending to snore audibly, and the woman retired, muttering to herself:
“Dat’s de strangest young gal I eber did see! Doane wanter git married, she say! Well, Lordy! she sartinly is diff’runt from any oder young gal in de worl’!”