He followed her up thoughHe followed her up though
He followed her up though
All this was nice enough to watch, but iscramping to write about, and anyhow, the main thing with me was to see whether she was going to accept him or not. I stayed close to their heels all day, but he didn't get a chance to propose until just after dark, down by the front gate, with nobody around except me and a calecanthus bush and—well, you just ought to haveseenher accepting him!
Ever since my last birthday there has a great change come over me for I have not kept my diary. Mother took me to one side that morning and said it was time for me to act like I was growing up now. She said many a girl as big as me could pick a chicken and I couldn't do a thing but write a diary; and would even run and stop up my ears every time Mammy Lou started to wring one's head off. She said all the ladies of the neighborhood nearly worried her to death advising her to teach me how to work and saying it was simply ridiculous for a great big girl like me to lie flat on her stomach reading a book all day in the grass. This shows how I am misunderstood by my family, and I told mother so, but she said for goodness'sake not to getthatidea into my head, for girls that were always complaining about being "misunderstood" were the kind that got divorces from their husbands afterward. I know this won't be the way with me, though, for I expect to live on good terms with Sir Reginald, always wearing pink satin and spangles even around the castle; and never getting mussy-looking when I give the children a bath in hopes of retaining his affections, like they tell you to in ladies' magazines. But I didn't mention Sir Reginald to mother, or she would have misunderstood me worse than ever.
Goodness! I reckon the neighbors would have a fit if they could see me of a night when I dress up and step out on the porch roof, making like I'm Juliet in Shakespeare. I wear a lace thing over my head and let a pair of Cousin Eunice's last year's bedroom slippers represent Romeo with fur around the top. They are the kind he wore the night they took me to see him and are all I can find in the house that looks atall like him. Nobody gets to see me doing this, though, for I lock the door. Somehow I think it would be a nicer world if you could always lock the door on your advising friends.
Last summer Rufe said I was so clever for my age (hesaid) that I ought to be in the city (I like this kind of advice) at a good school; so father and mother decided to move to the city and take Mammy Lou and spend the winter and all the other winters until I could get educated and live in a flat. So we went, me writing much sorry poetry about leaving my old home. The older I get the more I think of poetry and I reckon by the time I'm engaged I'll be crazy about it!
Our leaving was very sad, poor little Lares and Penates crying so hard at the depot where they went to tell Mammy Lou good-by that a drummer who was traveling with a kind heart gave them a quarter apiece to hush.
I never admired the name of flat from the first and when we started to rent one I admiredit less than ever. It consists of a very large house, divided up, and no place to kill a chicken. There is also no place to warm your feet, nor to pop corn. In fact, there are more places where youcan'tdo things than where you can. Rufe took us to every one in town nearly, and mammy paid particular attention to how the kitchens were fixed and asked what became of the potato peelings with no pigs to eat them up. Finally, after everything had been explained to her, she spoke up in the midst of a lady's flat with tears in her eyes and said:
"Mis' Mary, le's go back to the country whar slop is calledslop; up here it's 'gawbage!'"
Father and mother were both delighted that going back had been mentioned without either one ofthemsaying it first, for both of their feet were sore from looking for flats; and they like to have fallen over each other in agreeing with mammy.
"God never intended forhuman beingsto live in flats," father said, after the elevator had putus down on dry land once more, drawing a deep breath.
"Nor in cities either," Rufe agreed, with a far-away look in his eyes, like he might be thinking of the chestnut hunts and black haws of his boyhood.
That night they said well, they had found out they couldn't live in the city, and they weren't going to be separated from me, and Ihadto be educated; so Rufe then told them that a governess was the next best thing. This sounded so much like a young girl in a book that at first I was delighted. A governess is a very clean person that always expects you to be the same. Only in books they are usually drab-colored young ladies without any nice clothes or parents, but the son of the family falls in love with them, much to their surprise, and they lose their job. Then the son gets sent away to India with his regiment, where he hopes he can meet sweet death through a bullet hole. This is the way they are in books.
Mine, though, is not anything like that, being very pretty and pink, and with a regular father and mother like other folks have. But there is a great mystery connected with her. Don't anybody but me know about it, and I don't knowallabout it. From the very first she seemed to have something on her mind; this is very unusual for a young girl, so I tried to find out what the cause of it was. One day at the dinner table when she had been here about two weeks father remarked that I was learning faster from her than I ever had, and he hoped that she would stay here with us until I was finished being educated and not be wanting to get married, like most young ladies. Miss Wilburn, instead of laughing as one would expect, turned red in the face (her first name is Louise) and said something that sounded like "Oh no!"
Mammy, who was in the room at the time, spoke up as she usually does and said well, there must be something wrong with her if she didn't want to marry, as all right-minded women marriedonce and extra smart ones married as often as there was any occasion to! Instead of smiling Miss Wilburn looked more painful than ever; so mammy, who thinks enough of her toevendo up her shirtwaists, changed the subject.
That night when I went into the kitchen to talk to mammy during the cooking her mind was still on the subject of Miss Wilburn and marrying.
"Honey," she said to me, flipping over the cakes with great conviction, "I've been thinking it over and the long and short of it is that pore child's beenfooled! I know themsymptoms! She's been fooled and she's grievin' over it. Though thar ain't no use for a woman to grieve over naryoneman so long's she under forty and got good front teeth!"
I said oh, I hoped not. I hated to think about the lover of my governess proving false! I told mammy maybe he had just died or something else he couldn't help. But she interrupted me.
"Died nothin'! That ain't no excuse, for thar's allus time to marry no matter what you're fixin' to do. Thar ain't nothin' no excuse for not marryin' in this world," she kept on, "be it male or female. You needn't be settin' thar swingin' your legs and arguin' withmeabout the holy estate!"
The very first minute I thought there was anything of a loving nature connected with Miss Wilburn I got out my diary to write it down, as you see. She had told mother anyhow to let me keep it as it would "stimulate my mental faculties" and they would never be able to make a chicken-picking person out of me. I'm going to keep it right here in the drawer and jot down everything I see, although I amconvincedthat the lover is dead. Julius and Marcella are down here now for the first time since they were married. We see them a great deal, for they love to go walking through the woods with Miss Wilburn and me; but I can't waste my diary writing about themnow.
I just happened to think what a pity it was that I didn't try to find out the mystery about Miss Wilburn from Rufe and Cousin Eunice when we was up there last summer, for they knew her real well before we got her. In fact, for the first few days she and I didn't have any congenial things to talk about except them and tiny Waterloo. Waterloo's little name by rights is Rufus Clayborne, Junior, and he occurred at a time when I wasn't keeping my diary; but my grandchildren would have known about him anyhow, he being their little fifth cousin. He is very different from Bertha's baby, for he is a boy. I thought when I first saw him that if there was anything sweeter in this world than a girl baby it is a boy one!
Rufe and Cousin Eunice have lately been kinder New Thought persons, which think if you have "poise" enough there can't anything on earth conquer you. Rufe bragged particularly about nothing being able to conquerhimor get him in a bad temper, he had so muchpoise. But when little Rufus was just three nights old and he had walked him the othertwoand he was still squalling he threw up his job.
"Poise be hanged!" Cousin Eunice told us he said, "I've metmyWaterloo!" And they've called him that ever since.
When we were up there in the summer Waterloo was giving his father considerable trouble about the editorials. An editorial is a smart remark opposite the society column; and Rufe couldn't think up smart things while he was squalling.
"Oh, for a desert island!" he said one night when he was awful busy and couldn't get anything done. "Oh, for a mammoth haystack where I might thrust my head to drown the noise—I've read that Jean Jacques Rousseau used to do so! Listen, I've made a rhyme!"
"'Tis not rhymes but dimes we need most just now; so go on with your work," Cousin Eunice said, gathering Waterloo together to take him up-stairs.
"Merely removing the location of the noise will lessen it but slightly," Rufe called to her as she got to the door. "Seriously, do you know of a hayloft in the neighborhood where I might go?"
"You might go next door to the Williams' garage and thrust your head into their can of gasolene—that'sthe latter-day equivalent for hay!" Cousin Eunice answered kinder-mad, forsheadmires Waterloo, no matter how he acts.
So Miss Wilburn and I talked over all we knew about the little fellow; and I thought what a mistake I'd made in not asking Cousin Eunice what Miss Wilburn's lover's name was and where he is buried and a few other things like that. But then I couldn't, because I didn't know that there was a lover. Still, Mammy Lou can talk till her hair turns straight and she won't get me to believe that he's anything else but dead. Everything seems to point to it, from the fact of her not getting any letters from young men and looking lonesome at times and not wearing anydiamond engagement ring. I'm sure he gave her one, but maybe his wicked kinfolks made her give it back to them after the funeral. Or maybe she buried it in his grave. I don't know why Miss Wilburn never talks about him for one of our neighbors talks all the time about her husband which was killed in the war. I used to be delighted to hear her commence telling about him. He was killed at the battle of Shiloh and was the tallest and handsomest man in the army. She takes a great deal of pleasure in talking about him, and when there are summer boarders at her house he grows to be nearly seven feet tall and so handsome that it hurts your eyes to look at him. Her second husband is stone deaf and can't hear it thunder, which makes it nicer for them, for while it amuses her to talk about her first husband's good looks it ain't hurting to the second one's feelings.
The autumn leaves are just lovely now and make you want to write a book, or at least a piece of poetry. It's right hard on you, though,not to have anything to write about but a girl without a beau. It's kinder like eating sweet potatoes without butter. I decided this morning that I better make the most of what I have got as a subject, so I started to writing one calledThe Maiden Widow. I've heard of a book by that name, but I don't reckon they'll have me arrested for writing just a short poem by the same name. We have some nature study every morning in the woods, which is one of the best things about having a governess. She lets me do just as I like, so I took my tablet and while she was writing some history questions I composed on my poem. It is very discouraging work, though, to write about widows, for there's nothing on earth that will rhyme with them. I got one line, "The maiden widow, she wept, she did, oh!" which was sorry enough sounding, but I didn't know whether or not it was exactly fair to have two words rhyming with just one. After a while I thought maybe a regular poet could do a better job by it than even I could, so I decidedto ask Marcella to ask Julius to write me a few lines as a copy to go by, for anybody that can draw such lovely pictures ought to be able to write poetry.
Marcella came over this afternoon and I took her up-stairs very secretly to ask her about it. She said why, what on earth made me think that Miss Wilburn was grieving over a dead lover, and I told her thateverythingmade me think it. After studying about it for a little while she said well, it might be that I was right, for the girl did seem to have something preying on her mind. But she said such subjects were not suitable for children of my age to be writing about and that I ought to write about violets and sparrows. I said then would she please find out from Julius whether or not there was a rhyme for widow, for I might want to write a poem on them when I got grown, but she said, "Ann, you are incorrigible," which I keep forgetting to look up in the dictionary, although it looks like I would, for it has been said to me so many times.
A thing happened this morning which made me understand what Shakespeare must have meant when he said "Much Ado About Nothing." It reminded me of the time Cousin Eunice rushed to the telephone and called Rufe up and said, "Oh, dearest, the baby's got a tooth!" This was harmless enough in itself, but it is when things are misunderstood that the trouble comes in. Rufe misunderstood and thought she said, "The baby's got the croup," which is very dangerous. So he didn't stop to hear another word, but dropped the telephone and grabbed his hat. It was night, for Rufe's paper is a morning one that works its men at night, and didn't wait for a car, but jumped into a carriage, which costs like smoke. He drove by Doctor Gordon's house and told the driver to run in and tell Doctor Gordon to come right on and drive to his house with him, as his baby was very sick, although Doctor Gordon has an automobile of his own. He and Ann Lisbeth happened to have a few friends in to play cardswith them that night, but when she heard the news about the baby she told the company that Cousin Eunice was one of the best friends she had in the world and she would have to go on over and see if she could help any. So the card party was broken up and they all drove as hard as they could tear over to Rufe's house, where they found Cousin Eunice tickled to death over the tooth and washing Waterloo's little mouth out with boric acid water, which is the proper thing. This is what I call much ado about nothing, and I'm sure Shakespeare would if he was living to-day.
What happened this morning was equally as exciting and a long story, so I'm going to stop and sharpen my pencil, for I despise to write exciting things with a pencil that won't half write.
I reckon some people might lay the blame on me for what happened, but it ain't so at all, if people hadn't just misunderstood me. Anyhow, it may make me "curb my imagination," asJulius says, for that is what they blamed it all on.
When we started out for our nature study this morning father said if we could stand the sight of human nature a little would we go down town right after train time and get the mail? We said yes and Marcella, who was with us, said she would be glad to go in that direction, for Julius was there and we could meet him and he would walk home with us. She still likes to see him every few minutes in the day.
There are usually several very handsome drummers and insurance men and things like that standing around the post-office which have just got off of the train at this hour, but this morning there wasn't anybody but one strange man and he was talking to Julius like he knew him. When we passed by Julius spoke to us and I noticed that the strange man looked at Miss Wilburn and looked surprised. All in a minute I thought maybe he was the lover which had just returned from some foreign shore, insteadof being dead, and would run up with open hands and say, "Louise," and she would say, "Marmaduke," and all would be well.
I learned afterward, though, that his name is Mr. White and he lives in the city and has come down here on business and knew Julius. After we had passed he remarked that he was surprised to see Miss Wilburn down here as he didn't know she was away from home. Julius asked him if he knew Miss Wilburn and he said no, but he knew Paul Creighton, the fellow she was going to marry, mighty well. Julius, instead of not saying anything as a person ought, spoke up and said why he understood that Miss Wilburn's sweetheart was dead. The strange man said why he was utterly shocked for he had seen Creighton on the streets only a few days before, but hehadlooked kinder pale and worried then. He said it made him feel weak in the knees to hear such a thing, and Julius commenced saying something about it must be a mistake then, but Mr. White said no, he guessedit was so, for Mr. Creighton had looked awful pale and thin, like he might be going into consumption. Julius said well he was certain his wife had told him something about Miss Wilburn having a dead lover, but he hadn't paid much attention to what she was saying, like most married men; but it surely couldn't be so. By that time Mr. White was moving down the street to where we were and was asking Julius to introduce him to Miss Wilburn, so he could find out the particulars about poor old Creighton. Iwillgive Julius credit for trying to stop him, but he is one of the kind of persons that never knows when to say a thing and when not to, Mr. White, I mean. And before Julius could get him side-tracked they had caught up with us and there wasn't anything else to do but introduce him. Miss Wilburn smiled very joyfully when she heard his name, and in a minute he had got her off to one side and I heard him saying something about how horrified he was to hear the news about poor Creighton. In justan instant Miss Wilburn was the one that looked horrified and said whywhat? This seemed to bring Mr. White to his right mind a little and instead of going ahead and telling it he turned around to Julius and said:
"Why our friend, Young, here, was telling me that——"
"Itoldyou that it must be a mistake," Julius spoke up, looking awfully uncomfortable, "but I remember my wife saying that—oh, say, Marcella, explain—will you?"
"Why, Julius Young," Marcella commenced in a married-lady tone, "you promised me that you wouldn't say a word about it; anyway we only suspected——"
"Willnobodytell me what has happened to Paul?" Miss Wilburn said in a low, strangled voice, like she couldn't get her breath good.
"Ain't anything happened to him thatweknow of," I told her, for Julius and the rest of them looked like they were speechless. "We thoughtyouknew it!"
"Knewwhat? Oh, for the love of Heaven, tell me!" she said, poor thing! And I felt awful sorry for us all, but for Miss Wilburn and me in particular.
I just couldn't tell her we thought he wasplumbdead, so I told her we thought he must be very sick or something.
"He may be," she answered, not looking any happier. "I haven't heard from him since I've been here! Oh, it serves me right for acting such an idiot as to run off down here and forbid his writing to me! He may be desperately ill! How did you hear it?"
"Ain't anybody heard ityet!" I told her, feeling so angry at Marcella and Julius and Mr. White for telling such a thing and so ashamed of myself for making it up that I couldn't think very well. I kept wishing in my mind that it was the first day of April so I could say "April Fool," or an earthquake would happen oranythingelse to pass it off; but didn't anything happen, so I had to stand there withall of them looking at me and tell Miss Wilburn how Mammy Lou saidshebelieved she had been fooled because she looked so sad at the mention of marrying, butIbelieved the gentleman was dead.
Well, it took every one of us every step of the way home to explain it to her and to each other, each one of us talking as hard as we could; and Julius remarked what he'd do the next time he heard any such "sewing-society tales" under his breath.
Just as we got in sight of the house poor Miss Wilburn was so worn out with grief and anxiety that she sat down on the big stump and laughed and cried as hard as she could. Mother saw her from the window and she and mammy ran down to where we were to see what it was all about. She patted Miss Wilburn on the back and on the head and said, "poor dear," while mammy said she would run right back to the house and brew her some strong tea, which was splendid when a body was distressed about a man.
"There, dear, talk to us about him," mother said, after the whole story was told, "tell us about him, for talking will do you good. You've been unnaturally quiet about him since you've been here!"
"I was trying to find out whether or not I really loved him," Miss Wilburn said, after Julius and Marcella had left us and we were going on up the walk. "It was silly of me, for all the time I've been so lonesome for him that I felt as if I should scream if anybody suggested men or marrying to me!"
"Yes, you pore lamb," mammy said, walking on fast to make the tea, "you loves him, you shore do. I knows them symptoms!"
Ithink if the person which remarked, "It is not always May," had said April he would have come nearer hitting it, for I think it is the most beautiful time of all. There's something in the very feelings at this time of the year that makes you want to write pretty things, whether you know what you want to say or not. So I have got out my diary and dusted it off, it being laid away in the drawer ever since last fall, when I told about me getting Miss Wilburn's affairs so mixed up because there hasn't been anything happening.
One time not long ago I did get out my diary, for I got very excited over the news that awidowwas here, and I sharpened seventeen pencils so as to be ready for her. But she had themisfortune to marry, before I could get introduced to her, a man from her same city which had got on the train and followed her down here. She was a lovely, high-heeled, fluffy-petticoated kind of a widow and I could have writtenchaptersout of her I know; because all the time she was down here the ladies' sewing circle met three times a week and talked so that father said he heard they had to pass around potash tablets instead of refreshments for the sake of their sore throats.
Mammy Lou made fun of me when I told her how disappointed I was over not getting to meet such a pretty lady and write her experiences.
"Looks like you'd a knew better than to expect a widow to waste time a-cou'tin'," she told me with that proud look coming over her face that always does when she begins to brag on herself. "Theydon't cou't; they marries! Thar ain't nobody able to dispute withmeover the ways o' widows, for ain't I done beensixof themmyself?"
This ain't exactly so, it's just five, for she never has got that divorce from Bill Williams yet; and she says now that she's going to spend the money that the divorce would cost in beautifying herself so she can marry again. She says she wants to buy her a stylish set of bangs and a pair of kid gloves to go with them, then she is going to let the next man make her a present of the divorce for a bridal gift.
"And you needn't be settin' it down in that little dairy book o' yourn, neither, for your gran'chillen to be makin' spo't o'meabout after I'm done dead an' gone."
I told her it was diary, not dairy, but she wouldn't listen to me.
"Go 'long with that stuck-up talk," she told me, "ain't I been knowin' about dairies all my life? An' I never even heered tell of adi-ry till I learned to my sorrow of that pesky little book that's always gettin' lost and me havin' to find it." And I couldn't blame her very much for this, me being a great hand myself to get wordsmixed up in my childhood, especially such words as epistle and apostle. I always thought that ignorant people said "epistle" and smart ones "apostle."
But as I was saying, a sweetheart is the proper thing to get in the spring if youcanget one; but if you're too little for such a thing a kindred spirit is the next best thing a girl can have. A kindred spirit is a girl you lay awake till twelve o'clock of a night telling secrets to. Of coursemennever tell secrets, but they often need a kindred spirit, that is, a close friend, especially when they get so sick they think they're about to die they want the friend to run quick to their private office and burn up some letters in their desk that it wouldn't be healthy for them to let their wife know about, even if they were dead. So it is a convenient thing to have, male or female.
The first night I laid awake with mine I told her all about stuffing my insteps to make them look aristocratic and kissing Lord Byron's picturegood night every night, which Ineverwould have done in the daylight. At night things just seem to tellthemselves, although you are very sorry for it the next day. Men mostly propose at night; I guess one excuse is that the girls form such beautiful optical illusions under a pink lamp shade.
Well, I told her all I knew and she told me the story of her life, which is as follows: Her name is Jean Everett, her mother's name is Mrs. Everett and her young lady aunt is named Miss Merle Arnold on her mother's side. They are down here to spend the summer and are boarding close to our house. There is another boarder in the house for the summer which is named Mr. St. John, and Jean says if they had named him Angel instead of just Saint it wouldn't be any too good for him. And, if I do say it myself, he is as beautiful as a mermaid. Mammy Lou says he's got a "consumpted look," but to other people it is the height of poetry.
Jean is so full of poetical thoughts herself that her stomach is very much upset and nothing but chocolate candy will agree with her. She has promised the next time she stays all night with me she will tell me the one great secret of her life (as if I hadn't guessed it the minute she called Mr. St. John's name.) She hasn't got much appetite and the smell of honeysuckle fills her with strange longings. She says she either wants to write a great book or live in a marble palace or marry a duke, she can't tell exactly which. But the poor girl is cruelly misunderstood by her family, because her mother is giving her rhubarb to break it out on her.
Jean came over early this morning and said she just had to talk to somebody about how spiritual Mr. St. John looked last night with his fair hair and white vest on.
"He looked just like alily, Ann," she said, with almost tears in her eyes, and me remembering Doctor Gordon didn't laugh at her. Then,before I could comfort her, she had dropped down by the iris bed and was telling me the one great secret of her life, without waiting to stay all night and tell it in the moonlight.
"Lovehim," she said, gathering up a handful of the purple irises, "lovehim? I'dcookfor that man."
I didn't hardly know what to say in answer to this secret, which wasn't much of a secret to me; but she didn't wait for me to say anything for she went on telling me what big pearl buttons the white vest had on it and how Mr. St. John said "i-ther and ni-ther," and how broken her heart was. She said she was the most sinful girl on earth, for she believed Mr. St. John was about to get struck on her Aunt Merle, and here she was winning him away from her!
I asked her if he had ever said anything about loving her and she said why, no; no well-behaved girl would let a man say such a thing to her until they had been acquainted at least a month, and they hadn't been knowing eachother but twenty-two days. I then asked her if he had made any sign that he would like to say things to her when the month was out, but she said that was just where the trouble came in. Sheknewshe could win his love if she once got achanceat him; but no matter how early she got up of a morning to go and sit with him on the porch before breakfast, which was a habit of his, he would just ask her how far along she was in geography and if she didn't think algebra was easier than arithmetic, and such insulting questions as that. Then he would pace up and down the floor until her Aunt Merle came out of the front door, acting like acaged bridegroom! She said, oh, it would put her in her grave if she didn't get her mind off of it for a little while! Then she asked me if we were going to have strawberries for dinner and said she would run over and ask her mother if she could stay.
This morning Jean asked me if I remembered what Hamlet in Shakespeare said aboutwords.I told her I had just got as far asThe Merchant of Veniceand was getting ready to start on Hamlet when Miss Wilburn left. She said well, he remarked "words, words, words," but he didn't know what he was talking about. She said he meant that there wasn't anything in mere words, but he was badly fooled, for there was a heap in them.
I told her yes, there was something in words, for I had read of a beautiful Irish poet once that just couldn't think of a word that he wanted to finish up a song with. He studied over it for about three months, when all of a sudden one day his carriage upset and bumped his head so hard that he thought of it.
Jean said that was abeautifulstory and she would be willing to have her head bumped once foreveryword, if she could just write poetry that would touch one cold heart that she knew of.
I said well, how on earth did all this talk about words come up, and she told me that allher future happiness depended upon the meaning of just one word. Then she went on to tell me that this morning she had seen her Aunt Merle on the porch talking to Mr. St. John; so she slipped around to the end of the porch like I showed her how to do when there was anything interesting going on; and she had heard him tell Miss Merle that she mustn't "condemn the precipitation, but rather consider how hecoulddo otherwise." Then he had made use of a word that she never heard of before in her life. It waspro-pin-qui-ty; and Miss Merle's face had turned as red as tomatoes when he said it. She said if it was a love word she was ready to commit suicide of a broken heart, but if it was ahatefulword and they were quarreling, then there was great hopes for her. We looked it up, but the dictionary man didn't explain it hardly a bit. Finally I told Jean as it was spelled so much likeIn-i-qui-tymaybe they meant the same thing, and she went home feeling much easier in her mind.
I'm in such a writable mood to-night that I don't know what to begin on, and I reckon I'll know less about where to stop. Mammy Lou started us at it, for her mind never runs on a thing except loving and marrying. She asked me early this morning if we wasn't going to try our fortunes to-day by looking down into a well at noon, this being May Day. Me, being of an affectionate nature, of course liked the idea, so I ran right over to tell Jean, who was simply carried away. She said it would be such a relief to her to see the face of her beloved reflected in the well; but I told her that to seeanyface would mean that she was going to get a husband, which a girl ought to be thankful for, and not get her heart set on any particular one. While we were planning about it Miss Merle came in and asked what it was. When we told her she smiled and asked if she was too old and grown-up to join in the game, but I told her no indeed, she didn't act at all like a grown person. I really think Miss Merle is very fascinating.Even her name, Merle, sounds soft and sweet to me, like a right fresh marshmallow.
Now, naturally anybody would be excited to think that they were going to see their husband's face at twelve o'clock in the bottom of a well, and it seemed to us that the time never would come. There is a very old well down in our pasture close by the fence which ain't covered over, and a lot of lilac bushes right around it in bloom, so you couldn't well pick a prettier spot for your future husband's face.
Mammy Lou said we better all wear white sunbonnets, because they become you so, and Miss Merle looked awful pretty in hers, with her dark, curly hair.
I don't know how the news that we were going to do such a thing ever got spread, for we didn't tell hardly a soul—just mother and mammy and Mrs. Everett and the lady they board with and her married daughter, which all promised that they wouldn't ever tell, but somebody else found out about it, as you shall see.
We collected at the pasture gate at exactly a quarter to twelve and the minute the first whistle blew we raced to the well, for we were all anxious to see our husband if he was there. They said for me to go first as it was my well, but I said no, they must go first, because they were company, but Miss Merle said for me to look first, then she and Jean would look at the same time, as their husbands wouldn't mind reflecting together, being that they were kin.
My heart was beating so that I was about to smother, but I pulled my bonnet down low over my eyes to shut out any view except what was in the well, like mammy told us to do, and leaned 'way over and looked.
Now, up to this time, my diary, whenever I have mentioned Sir Reginald I was kinder half joking, and never really thought he would come to pass, as so many things in this life don't; but now I believe it'sso. While I couldn't make out his face very well and don't know whether his eyes are blue or brown, and his nose Roman ornot, still there was something glittering and shining in that well which I firmly believe was meant to be Sir Reginald de Beverley and hiscoat of mail!
They were punching me and saying, "Ann, do you see anything?" till I couldn't tell whether he smiled at me or not; but I remembered my manners even on such a critical occasion, so I got up and let them look.
They commenced pulling down their bonnets like I did and leaned over the well. I was on the other side, facing the lilac bushes—and in less time than it takes me to write it, me being in a hurry and my pencil short, there was something happening that made me feel like I was in a fairy tale. I saw those lilac bushes move and the next thing I knew there was Mr. St. John. Not in a white vest, it's true, but looking beautiful enough, even in the daylight. He motioned to me not either to speak or move, though I couldn't have done either one, being almost paralyzed between seeing him and Sir Reginaldat the same time. He tipped up right easy and leaned over the well, opposite to Miss Merle.
When Jean saw his image in the well she gave one overjoyed scream and leaned farther over to see more.
"Oh, it's Mr. St. John," she called out to her Aunt Merle, her voice sounding very deep and hollow, but joyful. "It'sMr.St. John!He'sgoing to be my future husband!"
He and Miss Merle were about to kill themselves laughing, for Miss Merle had seen him from the first; but when Jean looked up and saw him he looked at her so sweet that you felt like you could forgive him anything he was to do, even the "i-ther and ni-ther."
"I'd like to accommodate you, Jean," he said, laughing and catching her hand with an affectionate look, although he is usually very timid and dignified, "but the fact is—may I tell, Merle?" And the wayhesaid "Merle" sounded like a wholeboxof marshmallows.
Miss Merle smiled at him and then he toldJean if she would everybitas soon have it that way, he would be her uncle instead of her future husband.
I was so afraid that she would faint or die right there in the pasture that I told them I heard mother calling me and ran as hard as I could tear.
She came over this afternoon to tell me all about it and was feeling strong enough to eat a small basket of wild goose plums.
"Oh, it was a terrible shock at first," she said, stopping long enough to spit out a seed, "but theminutehe saidunclemy love changed. Why, Ann, an uncle is anoldperson, almost like a grandpa! Anyway, they've promised that I shall be in the wedding, dressed in a pair of beautiful white silk stockings."
It ain't any easy matter to keep a diary with a baby in the house, especially if he's at thewatchableage, although he's such a darling one that you don't begrudge him the trouble he makes. Before you more than get a sentence set down you have to drop everything and run and jerk the palm-leaf fan out of his hands, which he takes great pleasure in ramming the handle of down his throat. Then he eats great handsful of the Virginia Creeper leaves if you leave him on the porch for a minute by himself. And at times he won't be satisfied with anything on earth unless you turn up the mattress and let him beat on the bed-springs, which I consider a smart idea and think Cousin Eunice ought to write out and send to amagazine under the head of "Hints for Tired Mothers." But I say it again, there don't any of us begrudge him these many little ways, although it's hard to be literary with them; for when he smiles and "pat-a-cakes" and says "Ah! ah!" you don't care if you never write another line.
Mother made Cousin Eunice turn over the raising of him to her the very day she got here, for everybody knows, my diary, how a lady that's ever raised a baby feels toward a lady that's just owned one a few months.
"Noflannelon this precious child!" mother almost screamed the minute we got him off the train and started to drive home. "Why, it's positively flying in the face of Providence to leave his band off this early!" And mother looked at Cousin Eunice like she had done it a-purpose.
"Oh, Aunt Mary, please don't," poor Cousin Eunice said like she was about to cry. "For the last eleven months there has been scarcelya thing discussed in my presence butbelly-bands!" (There weren't any men around.) "It seems if a woman ever has one baby her thoughts never travel away from flannel bands afterward!"
"But pneumonia! Cholera infantum! Teething!" Mother kept on, hugging Waterloo close.
"That's whattwenty-threeof my neighbors tell me," Cousin Eunice answered, "then nineteen others say it's cruel to keep him all swathed up in this hot weather, while eleven said to leave it off until his second summer, and fifteen said for me to——"
"What does Doctor Gordon say?" mother asked, to change the subject off of the neighbors.
"He said, 'Damn those old women!'" Cousin Eunice told her, which made her jump, although it looks like she has lived with father long enough not to.
Right after dinner they started up the talkagain. Should Waterloo be banded or disbanded? They hadn't talked long when Mammy Lou came into the room holding something under her apron. She looked kinder mad and dignified at mother and Cousin Eunice because they hadn't asked her forhersay-so about bands.
"If it's entirely respectable for me to speak before I'm spoke to," she commenced, her voice very proud and haughty, "I'd like for you all to paymesome mind. There'stwosubject's I'm well qualified to speak about and one is babies. Ain't I done raised a bushel basket full o' little niggers, let alone that one beautiful little white angel that's the peartest and sweetest of any in the state?"
Which made me feel very much embarrassed with modestness.
"We all know that you made a good job of Ann," Cousin Eunice said very pleasantly just to pacify her. "What would you suggest about little Rufus?"
"These!" Mammy Lou said, drawing her hand out from her apron like a man on the stage dressed in velvet does his sword and we saw a string of speckled beans.
"Job's Tears," mammy told the company. "Ther ain't no need to worry about bands when you've gotthese! Ther nuvver has been a child that cut teeth hard from Adam on down if his ma put a string of these aroun' his neck——"
Cousin Eunice was beginning to say something nice when father spoke up and asked mammy who it was that put them around Adam's neck, which made her mad.
"Poke all the fun you want to," she said, "but the timewillcome that you-all 'ull be thankful to me for savin' these for Mr. Rufe's baby, or I'm a blue-gum nigger!"
Lots of times I take Waterloo over to make Jean a visit, which is easy on everybody, for the folks over there love babies so that they relieve me of his weight the minute I get there and leave me and Jean free to do whatever wewant to. She is teaching me what she calls "artistic handwriting" now, using an actress' signature for a copy. It consists of some very large letters and some very small ones, like the charts in an eye-doctor's office that he uses to see if you're old enough to wear spectacles.
Cousin Eunice has time now with so many folks to help tend to Waterloo to slip off every morning and go to a quiet place down in the yard with her paper and pencil and compose on a book she's trying to write. Before she was ever married she wanted to write a book, and if you once getthatidea into your head even marrying won't knock it out.
Cousin Eunice says I'm such a kindred spirit that I don't bother her when I go along too, but she has a dreadful time at her own house trying to write. She don't more than get her soul full of beautiful thoughts about tall, pale men and long-stemmed roses and other things like that before a neighbor drops in and talks for three hours about the lady around the corner'shusband staying out so late at night and what her servants use to scrub the kitchen sink. I told her I knew one lady that hated so for folks to drop in that she unscrewed the front doorbell, so she couldn't hear them ring, but she got paid back for it next day by missing the visit of a rich relation.
Rufe and Cousin Eunice may live to be thankful for the string of Job's Tears, but I reckon to-night Miss Merle and Mr. St. John wish that Job never shed a tear in the shape of a bean, for they were what a grown person would call "the indirect cause" of a quarrel between them. It's queer that such a little thing as Waterloo should be picked out by Fate to break up a loving couple, but he did; although I ain't saying that it wasaltogetherhis fault.
This afternoon I took him over to Jean's and we were having a lovely time out on their front porch, enjoying stories of her former sweethearts and a bottle of stuffed olives. She toldme about one she had last winter that she was deeply attached to. She would see him at a big library in the city where she loves to read every afternoon. She saw him there one time and got to admiring him so much that she would go up there every afternoon at the time she knew he would be there and get a book and sit opposite him, making like she was reading, but really feasting her eyes on his lovely hair and scholarly looking finger-nails.
"I never got acquainted with him, so never learned his name," she told me, jabbing her hat-pin deep down into the olive bottle, like little Jack Horner, "but he was always reading about 'The Origin of the Aryan Family,' so I'm sure he was a young Mr. Aryan."
I told her I certainly had heard the Aryan family spoken of, I couldn't remember where, but she said oh, yes, she knew it was a swell family and that I must have read about it in the pink sheet of the Sunday paper.
Then she said she had a souvenir of him,and, as I'm crazy about souvenirs, I begged her to go and get it, hoping very much that it was a miniature on ivory set in diamonds.
"What is it?" I kept asking her, as she was trying to get her legs untangled out of her petticoats to get up and go after it; we were sitting flat down on the floor, which sometimes tangles your heels dreadfully. Finally she got up, tearing a piece of trimming out, which she did up in a little ball and threw away, so her mother would lay it on the washerwoman when she saw the tear.
"Ashes;" she told me, kinder whispery, after she had reached the front door, for she was afraid somebody would hear; but it gave me a terrible feeling and I wondered how she got them away from his relations and whether she had to go to the graveyard in the middle of the night to do it or not. I comforted myself with the thought that they would be in a prettily ornamented urn, even if they were ashes, for I had read about urns in Roman history; butshucks! when she got back it wasn't a thing but a pink chewing-gum wrapper full of cigar ashes that he had thrown away one day right in front of her as they were going up the steps to the library.
Before I had time to tell her how disappointed I was there came a picture-taking man up the front walk and asked us to let him take Waterloo's picture for some post-cards. If you were pleased you could buy them and if you weren't you didn't have to. But he knew of course there wouldn't any lady be hardhearted enough not to buy a picture of her own baby.
Nothing could have delighted us more, unless the man had said takeourpictures; and Jean remarked that Waterloo ought to be fixed up funny to correspond with the string of beads around his neck. She ran and got a pair of overalls that belonged to the lady she boards with's little boy and we stuffed Waterloo in. He looked too cute for anything and we wasjust settling him down good for the picture when Jean spoke up again and said oh, wasn't it a pity that he didn't have any hair on his head, as hair showed up so well in a picture. I told her it was aristocratic not to have hair when you're a baby, on your head. She said shucks! how could anything connected with a baby be aristocratic? This made me mad and I told her maybe she didn't know what it was to be aristocratic. She said she did, too; it was aristocratic to have a wide front porch to your house and to eat sweetbreads when you were dining in a hotel. I was thinking up something else to say when the picture-taking man said hurry up. There is a great deal more to this, but it is so late that I'm going to leave the rest for to-morrow night. Anyhow maybe my grandchildren will be more interested to go on and read, for magazine writers always chop their stories off at the most particular spot, when they are going to be continued, just where you are holding your breath, so as tomake you buy the next number of the magazine.
Well, in just a minute after we were talking about the hair Jean said she knew theverything! Her Aunt Merle was up on the far back porch drying her hair that she had just finished washing, and had left her rat lying on her bureau. She had seen it there when she went to get the ashes of Mr. Aryan. She said it was a lovely rat, which cost five dollars, all covered with long brown hair; and she said it was just the thing to set off Waterloo's bald head fine. So she ran and got it and we fixed it on. He looked exactly like a South Sea Islander which you see in the side show of an exposition by paying twenty-five cents extra. (An exposition is a large place which makes your feet nearly kill you.) But the picture-man said he looked mighty cute and snapped him in several splendid positions.
Now, if Mr. St. John had just stayed wherehe belonged this would be the end of the story and I could go on to bed to-night, without having to sit up by myself writing till the clocks strike eleven, which is a lonesome hour when everybody else is in bed.
But Mr. St. John didn't stay away; and, as all the bad things that happen are laid on Fate, I reckon she was the one that put it into his head to walk up those front steps and on to that porch before we noticed him, for we were trying our best to get Waterloo back into citizen's clothes.
He stopped to see what it was we were scrambling over, and when he saw that it was alive he threw up his nice white hands and remarked "Heavens!" which is the elegant thing to say when you're surprised, although father always says, "Jumping Jerusalem!"
"What is the thing?" he asked, after he had looked again. Jean told him why it was just the lady over at our house's little baby dressed up. Then he asked what that horrible woollygrowth on his head was, which tickled Jean mightily. Then, just for the fun of seeing what hewouldsay when he was very much surprised, she jerked it off and held it up, like the executioner did Mary, Queen of Scot's head, which gives me a crinkly pain up and down my back even to read about. The rat was just pinned together and set up on Waterloo's little noggin, so Jean jerked it off and explained to Mr. St. John that it was her Aunt Merle's rat.Ialways knew it wasn't any good idea to talk about such things before a man that was a person's lover; but I thought Jean had had more experience in such things than I had and it wasn't my place to interrupt her.
I am sure Mr. St. John felt like saying "Jumping Jerusalem" when Jean told him that the woolly growth was the rat of his beloved. If I was writing a novel I'd say that he "recoiled with horror," that is, he jumped back quickly, like he didn't want it to bite him, and sat down.
"Imagine!" he kept saying to himself like he was dazed; "imagine a mantouchingthe thing!Kissingthe thing!"
I thought, of course, he was talking about Waterloo, and was ready to speak up and say, "I thank you, Mr. St. John, my little cousin is not to be called a 'thing,'" but Jean spoke first.
"What would you want to kissthisfor?" she asked him. "'Tain't any harm to kiss in themouthafter you're engaged, is it?"
We might have been standing there asking him such questions as that till daylight this morning for all the answers we got out of him, but while he sat looking at us and we were trying to squirm Waterloo's little fat legs out of the overalls and him kicking and crying, Miss Merle walked out on the porch. She saw Mr. St. John first, as you would naturally expect an engaged girl to do, and started toward him, but just then she saw us and stopped.
"Why, what on earth are you children doingwith my rat down here?" she asked, not looking a bit ashamed.
We told her what we had been doing with it and she just laughed and said well, it was too hot to wear the thing on such a day anyway, although she had looked for it high and low.
All the time we were talking Mr. St. John looked at her in the most amazed way, like he expected to see her appear looking like a Mexican dog, but was greatly surprised to see her with such a nice lot of home-made hair. If he had had any sense he would admire her all the more for not telling a story about that rat; for I've seen a thousand young ladies in my life that wouldn't have owned up to it for a hundred dollars, but would have made their little niece out a story and then boxed her ears in private. I hope when I get grown I won't be aliarableyoung lady, although it does seem like they're twice as quick to get married as an honest one.
He didn't act with good sense, though, for they soon got to talking and we could hearwhat they said (although we were out of sight) for they were high-toned remarks.
He said hehatedshams, and she said well, that wasn't any sham for every blowsy-headed girl wears them nowadays and everybody knows it, even the poets and novel-writers that always make their heroines so fuzzy-headed. Then she called him a prig and he said something back at her and she gave him back the ring, which was a brave thing to do, it being a grand diamond one with Mizpath marked in it.
Of course the next thing that happens after an engagement is broken is for it to get mended again. All day we have hung around Miss Merle to see just when she gets the ring back again, but up to a late hour to-night, as the newspapers say about the election returns, there was nothing doing. Oh, it does seem a pity that they would let the news go down to their children or be put on their tombstones that their lives were blighted on account of a rat!
I've neglected you, my diary, for the last few days because my mind has been on other things. It rained all the next day after I wrote last and I couldn't go over to Jean's, which put me out greatly. I finally thought about sending a note by Lares and Penates and paid them in chicken livers, me being so uneasy in my mind that I didn't have any appetite for them, and knowing that they loved them enough to fight over them any time.
I told Jean in the note to fix some kind of signal like Paul Revere to let me know the minute the ring got back to Miss Merle, for I was deeply worried, me and Waterloo and Jean being to blame for it. Then, too, it is dangerous for an engagement ring to stay returned too long for it might get given to another girl.
Jean was delighted with my note and said she would certainly hang a lantern in the garret only she never could undo the chimney of a lantern to light it, and never saw a lady person that could; but it was a romantic idea.So she thought hanging a white towel in the window that faces our house for a signal would do very well, and I could know by that if it kept on raining and I couldn't get over there.
Well, I was so interested that I hardly moved from that side of the house all day, until it got so dark that I couldn't see the house, much less a towel. So I went sorrowfully to bed. The next morning I was delighted to see that I was going to get rewarded for my watching, forlongbefore breakfast I discovered a white thing, and it was waving from Mr. St. John's window, which made it all the surer in my mind.
Although it was cakes and maple syrup I didn't waste much time over breakfast, but grabbed my hat and started for Jean's.
Miss Merle was on the front porch and I noticed Mr. St. John just inside the hall, looking like he would like to come out, but was waiting for her to give him lief. She looked up at me quick.
"Why, Ann," she said, "what are you in such a big hurry about?"
I've often noticed, my diary, that when people are in a hurry and can't think of anything else to tell they tell thetruth, although they don't intend to. It was that way with me.
"Oh, I'msoglad you and Mr. St. John have made up!" I told her, fanning hard with my hat, for I was all out of breath.
She looked very strange and asked me, "What?" and so I told her over again. Just then Mr. St. John came out and asked who was that talking about him behind his back. He looked pitiful, although he tried to look pleasant, too.
Jean heard me talking and came running down the stairs just in time to hear me telling it over again to Miss Merle.
"Why, there ain't asignof a towel hanging out the window," she told me, looking very much surprised and me greatly mortified. "You must have dreamed it!"
Miss Merle asked her then what she was talking about and it was their turn to look surprised when she told them.
I told them I had felt awfully bad about the rat, because me and Waterloo was partly responsible, and they kinder smiled. But I couldn't let them think that I hadmadeup the towel story, so I told them if they would come around on the side that faces our house I'd show them. Mr. St. John and Miss Merle looked at each other very peculiar and he said:
"It's a shame to disappoint the children!" which she didn't make any answer to, but she lookedtolerableagreeable. Then I begged them to come on around to Mr. St. John's window and I could show them I wasn't any story.
"My window!" he said, looking surprised; then his face turned red. "Why, it must have been my er—shirtI hung there last night to dry after I was out in that shower!"
We couldn't help from laughing, all of us; but he laughs like the corners of his mouth ain'tused to it. That is one bad thing about a dignified man—they're always afraid to let their mouth muscles stretch.
Miss Merle caught me and Jean by the hand with a smile and said let's go and see what that signal looked like that brought Ann over in such a hurry. "A shirt is a highly proper thing to discuss—since Thomas Hood," she said as we started down the steps.
"Pray don't," he said, the corners of his mouth wrinkling again, but his face just covered with red. "I'll be the happiest man on earth, Merle, if you'll just forgive me for my asininity; but—docome back!—— For it's anundershirt!"
"Come on in, the egg-nog's fine," Rufe called out to us as we came up the walk to the side gate this morning, a beautiful Christmas morning, after a long tramp down through the wood lot and up the ravine.
"Come on out, the ozone's finer," Cousin Eunice sang back at him; then stopped still, leaned against the gate-post and looked up at the mistletoe hanging in the trees all about.
"You can get ozone three hundred and sixty-five days in the year, egg-nog but one!" he hollered again, but I saw him set his glass down and start to swing Waterloo up on his shoulder. No matter how long they have been married you can always find Rufe wanting to be where Cousin Eunice is, and vice versa.
Long ago anybody reading in my diary would have seen that mother is the kind of woman who loves to mother anything that needs it, from a little chicken with the gapes to a college professor out in a storm without his rubbers; and the latest notion she has taken up is to see that Miss Martha Claxton, one of the teachers in a girls' school that has been opened up near here, shall not get homesick during the week-ends. We all like her, Mammy Lou even saving the top of the churning every Friday to make cottage cheese for her; and Cousin Eunice said she knew she was a kindred spirit as soon as she said she could eat a bottle of olives at one sitting andlovedBaby Stuart's picture. So we invited her to go walking with us this morning and Cousin Eunice told her all about her courting in the ravine.
Ialso knew about herpeculiarity, which Cousin Eunice didn't; but I didn't like to mention it, for Miss Claxton had smashed her eye-glasses all to pieces yesterday and was wearingan embroidered waist and a string of coral, so instead of looking intellectual, as she usually does, she looked just like other girls. But the men of our family all laugh at her behind her back and call her "The Knocker," because she carries a hammer with her on all her rambles instead of a poetry book, and knocks the very jiblets out of little rocks to see if they've got any fossils on their insides. In other words, she is a geologist. A person ought not to blame her though until she has had time to explain to them that her father was professor of it and had a chair in a college when she was born. So he taught her all about rocky subjects when she was little, and she's crazy about it. Still, I would rather be with a person that is crazy about geology than one that isn't crazy at all. I hatemediumpeople. But, as I have said, we are all very fond of her, although she has never done anything since I've known her that would be worth writing about in this book, not having any lover; so it has been lying on the shelf allcovered with dust ever since Jean left. Sometimes I think I'll never find another Jean!
To get back to my subject, though, this morningwaslovely—cool enough to keep your hair in curl (if you were a grown lady) and warm enough to make your cheeks pink. Cousin Eunice said shecouldn'tgo back into the house while the sunshine was so golden, so we leaned our elbows on the fence and Miss Claxton examined a handful of pebbles she had picked up on our walk. Pretty soon Rufe came out with Waterloo on his shoulder and in his hands a horse that can walk on wheels and a mule that can wag his head, ears, legs and tail and say, "queek, queek," all at the same time.
"Oh, Rufe, isn't it lovely?" Cousin Eunice said, looking away toward the hills and sighing that half-sad sigh that rises in you when you see something beautiful and can't eat it nor drink it norsqueezeit.
"Isn't what lovely, your complexion?" he answered,just to tease her, for Rufe loves the outdoors as much as any of us, and if Waterloo takes after his mother and father both, he will never sleep in anything more civilized than a wigwam.
"Don't joke," she said. "It's too beautiful—and too fleeting! Just think, in another week we'll be back, dwelling with the rest of the fools amid the tall buildings!"
"It is everything you say," he answered soberly, looking in the direction she pointed, and he seemed to have that happy, hurting feeling that comes to you when you look at Lord Byron's picture, or smell lilies-of-the-valley.
"Don't you feel light on a morning like this?" Cousin Eunice said again, still looking at the hills. "Couldn't you do anything?"
"Anything!" he echoed. "Even push my paper to the hundred thousand mark—or carry a message to Garcia."
"Especially the message to Garcia! Nowcouldn'tyou?" she said with a bright smile. "Icould do that myself, without even mussing up my white linen blouse!"
Miss Claxton looked up at them with a puzzled look, and Rufe and Cousin Eunice unhitched hands.
"Miss Claxton," Rufe began with a half-teasing twinkle in his eyes (I had heard father telling him a while ago about Miss Claxton being a knocker), "this little affair about the message to Garcia happened a bit this side of the Eocene age, so maybe you haven't bothered your head about it. I might explain that——"
"Nobody asked you to, sir," she said, with such a rainbow of a smile at him that I was surprised. If she could smile like that at a married man what would she do at a single one? "I know a lot more things than I look to—with my glasses on! That carrying the message to Garcia was a brave thing to do, even aside from the risks. It is heroic to do the thing at hand. I'm trying to learn that lesson myself. I'm being a schoolmarm and wearing glasses tolook like one, instead of following my natural bent in the scientific field," she wound up, still smiling.
"What's your ambition?" Cousin Eunice said, looking at her wonderingly.
"Knowing what's to be known about Primitive Man," Miss Claxton answered. "He's the only man I ever cared a copper cent about!"
"Mine's writing a book that will make me famous overnight, I don't want to wait to awake some morning and find myself so," Cousin Eunice said, stooping over to set Waterloo's horse up on his wheels, for he would come unfixed every time Waterloo would yank him over a gravel; and all the time we were talking he kept up a chorus of "Fick horte! Fick horte!"
Rufe said his ambition was never to see an editor's paste-pot again, and he was turning to me to ask what mine is when the conversation was interrupted. I was glad that it was, for I should hate to tell them just what mine is. Somehow it is mostly about Sir Reginald deBeverley, and I'm old enough now to know that he may not be an English lord after all and dress in a coat of mail. He may be just a plain young doctor or lawyer, and we'll have to live in a cottage (only excuse me from a flat, I wouldn't live in a flat with Lord Byron) and maybe we'll just have chicken on Sunday. But as long as he has brown eyes and broad shoulders and lovely teeth I shall manage to do with crackers and peanut butter through the week. A woman will doanythingfor the man she loves.
But I didn't have to tell them all this, for just then we heard the gate click and saw our friend, Mr. Gayle, coming up the walk.
"There comes old Zephyr," Rufe said with a laugh. "It was the biggest lie on earth to name him Gayle. Even Breeze would have been an exaggeration."
"He's awfully smart," I told Rufe, for I hate to have my friends laughed at. "I know you and Julius joke about him on account of hisgentle ways and broad-brimmed hats! Father says it's better to have somethingunderyour hat than to have so much style in its looks!"
"Well, he has something under his hat," Cousin Eunice said, "and hat enough to cover twice as much. But I think those old-timey things are becoming to him!"
"What is the subject about which he knows so much?" Miss Claxton asked, following him with her eyes until Dilsey let him in at the front door.
"Heaven," Rufe answered her, "and hell. He writes deep psychological stuff for the magazines and they pay him ten cents a word for it. He must spend his dimes building model tenements, for he certainly doesn't buy new hats with them."
"What does he say about Heaven and the other place?" Miss Claxton asked, much to our surprise, for we had thought she didn't care about anything but earth.
"He says they're both in your own heart.The Heaven side comes up when you've done a decent job at your work—and loved your office boy as your own nephew!"