"TAKE OFF THAT APRON," SHOUTED THE GENERAL
"TAKE OFF THAT APRON," SHOUTED THE GENERAL
"Take off that rag!" he shouted.
"Run out and take off the apron, as the General bids you," Sarah said.
And May ran.
"I didn't tell him to go out and change that cloth."
"I did."
"I must remind you, Madam, that he is my nephew and I shall not permit him to go about dressed like a girl in my house."
"And I must remind you that the boy is your guest, at your invitation, and I shall not permit you to terrify and oppress him."
The General glared at Sarah and Sarah returned his look. Then Sarah nodded her head emphatically and the General did the same. There was no more said, but it looked as if the masquerader's position in the Haines household was likely to be one of no little importance.
"It is perfectly horrid to be a girl," Gay said to himself, as the train steamed away toward Hazelnook. "I always thought that the first time I traveled alone I'd ask to ride on the engine; now I can't do it because I've got on these old skirts! I hope May won't suffer so being a boy. I——"
Gay's reverie was interrupted by an exclamation,
"Why, that must be little May Walcott!"
"She's taken in, too. Here's some fun, perhaps," thought naughty Gay, turning in the direction whence the voice had come. In the seat behind were two ladies; a pretty matron and a young girl, toward whom Gay was instantly attracted.
"Don't you remember Mrs. Dayton, who visits your mamma?" said the matron.
Gay sprang up, dragged the daisy-trimmed hat off and bowed, then instead of returning the hat to his head he held it in his hand, with his small thumb curved over the brim. It was an absurd position for a girl, but neither lady noticed it.
"This is Miss Maud Berkeley," said Mrs. Dayton. "You may have heard your Uncle George speak of her."
"He never said a word to me about Miss Berkeley." Gay looked aggrieved. It was unkind of Uncle George—a favorite uncle—not to have mentioned such a lovely lady.
"You have not told us how your mamma is?" continued Mrs. Dayton.
"She is very sick. That's why we were sent away—my twin sister and I."
"Sister?" exclaimed Mrs. Dayton. "I didn't know you were both girls: I thought one was a boy."
"One is a boy," Gay admitted.
Mrs. Dayton trod no further on this delicate ground, much to Gay's relief. The conductor passed along and she hailed him.
"Will you turn this seat over, please?" said she. "Now, May, you can sit with us."
Gay rose rather reluctantly. "It's awful," thought the little fraud. "I know she'll find it all out, but father always says, 'Be polite to ladies, no matter what it costs,' and I'm not going to forget to be polite just because I'm playing be a girl."
Then Gay slipped into the proffered seat, hat in hand, just as father did when he joined ladies!
"Her manners are just like a boy's," murmuredMrs. Dayton, in the perfectly audible tone that grown people often employ in the presence of children—just as though they must be deaf because they are young.
"She is a dear," returned Miss Maud. "George often speaks of her."
At the mention of Uncle George's name Gay asked,—
"Isn't my Uncle George a rattling good fellow?"
"Yes," concurred Miss Maud, with a pretty blush.
"He's the jolliest fellow! He gave me boxing gloves, a baseball bat and Indian clubs for Christmas."
"What strange gifts to a girl!" Mrs. Dayton remarked.
"He gave my sister the same as he gave me—all except the bat. He didn't give her one, although she's a tip-top player, because he thinks baseball isn't a game for girls."
"But he gave you a bat," said Mrs. Dayton, in a puzzled tone.
"Y—es," faltered Gay, in great confusion. Here a bright idea flashed through the little rogue's brain. "He may be partial to me. I may give the bat to baby; he's going to be a splendid fellow. Nurse says his muscle is as fine now as little Lord Roslyn's was when he was six months old. Lord Roslyn was the little nobleman that lived with nursein her castle in England. We're going to name baby, George—that ought to help make him a jolly little kid, don't you think so?"
"Miss Maud thinks so," said Mrs. Dayton, quizzically.
"Does my Uncle George know that you like him so well, Miss Maud? If he doesn't I'll tell him, if you like."
"He—knows it," faltered Miss Berkeley.
"Some day, perhaps, your Uncle George will give you Miss Maud for an auntie," said Mrs. Dayton, who evidently enjoyed teasing her friend.
"Did he say so?"
"Yes," replied Mrs. Dayton.
"Are you sure he wasn't fooling?—Uncle George is awfully full of fun."
"Do you think he was fooling, dear?" inquired Mrs. Dayton.
"Will you have a wedding, Miss Maud?" Gay asked, anxiously.
"Yes," Miss Berkeley admitted, with a charming blush.
"I hope it won't be till I'm grown up, and perhaps Uncle George will ask me to be an usher."
"You queer little chicken!" cried Mrs. Dayton. "You mean bridesmaid; girls are never ushers."
"Oh!" said Gay.
After this the ladies talked together until thetrain reached Hazelnook. When Gay was preparing to leave the car Miss Berkeley said,—
"Will you not kiss me good-by?"
Gay hesitated. "Uncle George mightn't like it," he said. "He's awfully particular about the things that belong to him." Then the masquerader dropped his mask altogether, and a soft kiss fell on the lady's ungloved hand. "That makes me your knight—I'm mother's too."
"I accept your allegiance," said Miss Berkeley, simply; but there was such a strange expression in her eyes that guilty Gay made a sudden rush for the door.
"She suspects me!" thought the culprit. "She's too much of a brick to tell, though, so I'm safe."
An instant later Gay regretted this rash assertion. In jumping off the car-steps the horrid skirts caught and he fell into Uncle George's arms just as that young gentleman was about to board the train.
"Hello!" said Uncle George, staring slightly, "what are you doing here?"
"Where are you going? Have you lost your tongue, Brownie?"
"Brownie" was Uncle George's name for the real May, and the mock May heard it with great pleasure, for it proved that there was no danger of discovery.
"I am going to visit Aunt Linn till mother is better," Gay answered.
"Where is Gay?"
"He was invited to Cedarville," said the unblushing young rogue. "What are you doing up here?"
"Business, Brownie."
"Did you expect to find it on the train, Uncle George?" said audacious Gay, "and is the first letter of its name M? Miss Maud is awfully sweet, isn't she?—and almost as pretty as mother."
"Thank you," said Uncle George, with great gravity. "By the way," he added, "you may need a little extra money while you are here," and he dropped some silver in Gay's outstretched palm, and jumped on the last car as the train moved outof the station, and nodded his farewell from the platform.
"Thanks, awfully," shouted Gay. If this was Uncle George's way of showing his appreciation of the compliment to Miss Berkeley, it was an exceedingly agreeable way, and one to be recommended to all uncles in love.
"Fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, ninety cents!" counted Gay. "If I stay two weeks I can spend—let me see, twelve—for there'll be two Sundays when I can't spend anything—twelve in ninety goes seven times and a fraction. That's almost eight cents a day!"
Then he pulled up his skirt, but the pocket wasn't there!
"My!" he exclaimed, looking around to see if anybody had noticed his mistake. "How a fellow does forget that he isn't a boy when he's trying to be a girl!"
"Goin' to Miss Linn's?" drawled a voice at Gay's elbow.
A tall, lank man, on whose hatchet-like face an expression of good humor rested as if it belonged there, was standing near, leaning lazily on his whip-handle.
"Yes, I'm going there; I had nearly forgotten it."
"I shouldn't a-let you forget it long. I'm thedriver of the stage and I don't let passengers forget to ride with me; that wouldn't be business. Besides, Miss Linn she asked me to look out for you—and I guess you need it—you look lively for a girl."
Gay smiled at this sally. This man was jolly enough to be in a book! If there were others like him a visit to Hazelnook wouldn't be so dull.
"Ready?" asked the driver.
"Yes. That's my box down there—the leather one, and here's the check. I'll help you with the box—I've great muscle."
"Wall! Wall! I ruther guess you're the queerest young lady I ever see! 'Great muscle' have ye? Wall, come along."
Miss Linn's guest helped the driver carry the leather box to the stage. The sight would not have delighted the refined old lady's eyes, but Gay was very well pleased to be of so much assistance, and insisted upon rendering further service in lifting other luggage.
"Will you get in, miss?" said the driver, when the last box was placed.
"I'll get up, if you please."
"Shall I give you a leg up, miss?"
"Thank you, no!" laughed Gay, scrambling up and sitting down in triumph beside the other passenger, a solemn-faced man, who looked like a prig and was one.
"You help yourself pretty well," said the driver, as he took the vacant place at Gay's side.
"A fellow soon gets used to helping himself," replied Gay, carelessly, though inwardly well pleased at the driver's compliment.
"Fellow!" repeated the driver, greatly amused at such boyish manners. "You're a gay one—and you're as spry as they come."
"I'm the best performer on the horizontal bar at my gymnasium."
"I shouldn't wonder if you was."
"I'm going to pitch for our nine when I go back home. I tell you the fellows don't get on to my curves without some study."
"My boy Lyman's crazy over ball. I can't get a stroke of work out of him. So you play ball, do you?"
"Yes, and football, too," said Gay, carried out of all remembrance of the behavior entailed by skirts and a Gainsborough hat trimmed with daisies. "I generally play half-back," he added.
This was more than the prig could bear in silence. "I have a little girl at home," said he; "she is about your age, but she doesn't kick football, nor play ball, nor swing on the horizontal bar."
"Is she sick—or a cripple?" asked Gay, with polite interest.
"She is a lady," the prig answered.
"She must be like our Alice," said Gay, ignoring the prig's sarcasm. "Alice is so quiet and nice that mother often allows her in the drawing-room when there's a tea or anything. Alice is pretty; her hair is long and the color of molasses candy, and Jane braids it for her and ties it with ribbons. And she has little feet, and little, cunning hands, and she wears kid gloves all the time. But my twin sister is the dandy; Alice isn't a patch on her. She'll stand anything without a whimper. Sand! well, I should say so. She'll face the hottest ball without a wink. She's a boss sprinter—you ought to see her take her three hundred yards!—and she never did a mean thing in her life."
The prig was dumb with amazement when Gay finished this remarkable speech; he could only congratulate himself that his little daughter was not there to hear it.
"I wish I might drive," said Gay, with a wistful glance at the reins.
"So ye can," returned the driver. "It's a straight piece, now, clean to Miss Linn's."
"Thank you," said Gay, gathering up the reins in small brown hands as steady as the driver's own. He drove with many a loud, exultant crack of the whip, guiding the horses with more flourishes than a veteran member of a coaching club, over the smooth country road, past the village shops and thepost-office, at a smart trot, and up the lane that led to the prig's house as fast as the horses could trot. The prig climbed down over the side of the coach and paid his fare with ill-concealed reluctance; he had been bounced and jolted by the objectionable young romp on the box until his bones and his temper were alike affected. He said "Good afternoon," as if he had been speaking an eternal farewell, and one that gave him considerable satisfaction.
"Now how much further is it?" Gay inquired, as the door closed behind the prig.
"That's Rose Cottage, your aunt's place, down yonder," the driver replied, pointing to a house not far distant.
"So near!" sighed Gay. "If I had known it I would have pulled up the horses a little and pieced out the drive."
In summer everybody in Hazelnook receives callers on the porch, and Miss Linn and Miss Celia were entertaining the judge's mother, the doctor's wife, and the minister on the vine-embowered porch of Rose Cottage when the stage drove up, Gay still handling the reins.
"Auntie! See me!" Gay cried. "I've driven half the way. It is awfully jolly to sit up here and the driver let me use the whip—use it, not just crack it—twice!"
Miss Linn looked at Miss Celia, Miss Celia looked at the judge's mother, the judge's mother looked at the doctor's wife, and she looked in her turn at the minister, who was too much astonished to look at any one!
Finally, Miss Celia said,—
"Aren't you going to get down, my dear?"
Gay rose rather reluctantly; he had hoped to be permitted to drive the horses to the stable, which was a good half-mile back on the road. "Good-by," he said, grasping the driver's hand; "I hope I shall see you soon, and Lyman, too. I'll come round to your stable and see the Holstein cattle you told me about—they must be immense, particularly the yearling. I never had such a good drive in my life."
After this cordial farewell Gay dropped like a ripe plum off the side of the coach to the ground. Off came the daisy-wreathed hat, then he drew his heels well together and bowed profoundly. It was a salute that would have delighted General Haines' military soul, but it did not please the group on the porch. Miss Linn, Miss Celia, the judge's mother, the doctor's wife and the minister rose and stood in a row, like dahlias,—but no one spoke a word!
"Celia," said Miss Linn, the next day, "I understand it perfectly; Elinor has been sick so much that the younger children have been left with the servants and this is the result. Now we must make May over."
Miss Linn and Miss Celia were sewing in their morning room. They were old-fashioned gentlewomen, not altogether in touch with modern habits and they held to their needlework of a forenoon as religiously as though it had been a practise ordained by a bishop, and when Miss Linn said, "We must make May over," she spoke as though the petticoated fraud was a misfit garment.
Now Miss Celia never opposed the will or wishes of her elder sister. Contradiction was not a weapon to be used with stately Miss Linn, who was, in the phrase of their servant, Margery, "terrible sot in her way!" But Miss Celia did venture to say,—
"May is a trifle hoydenish, perhaps, but time will remove that blemish from her bearing without our assistance, sister."
"She is incorrigible!" sighed Miss Linn. "I saw her this morning jumping over the fence—the front fence! Of course I stopped that, but when I asked her if she wasn't ashamed, she said, 'No'm, that's the best standing jump I ever made!' I admit I can't understand how Elinor's daughter can be such a tomboy!"
"We have left youth far behind us, Beulah; you must remember that. We can't realize just what it is to be young and full of life."
"I like a girl to have some sense of propriety. May is entirely without any. I saw her not an hour ago with her arm around Patsy Dunn's neck. I called her into the house at once and told her that it was highly improper for her to be so familiar with boys. What do you think she said?"
"I can't imagine."
"'Patsy is a dandy, auntie! I'd like to put on the gloves with him!' I didn't understand what she meant, but I took her desire for gloves to be a favorable omen and I told her I hoped she would put on gloves and keep them on all the time when she was out of doors. But I doubt if she will do it—she only laughed and said she hadn't 'quite sand enough for that'—whatever that means."
Miss Celia groped for the meaning of this speech and failing to grasp it said nothing, but sewed on diligently.
"My mind is made up," continued Miss Linn. "That girl shall be made over before she goes home to Elinor. I have planned it all out. I never closed my eyes last night!—and I shall begin at once."
"What is your plan?"
"You will see," said Miss Linn, mysteriously. She laid her sewing aside and rang a small silver bell, peremptorily.
A moment later old Margery appeared at the door. "Did you ring, mem?"
"Where is Miss May?"
"In the back yard, mem," answered Margery with reluctance that did not escape Miss Linn's keen eyes.
"What is she doing?"
Margery hesitated. Tale-bearing was against her principles, but no one hesitated long before replying to Miss Linn, and the old servant answered, "She's helping John saw wood, mem."
If a bombshell had exploded in that quiet room the effect upon the Misses Linn could not have been more startling.
"Do you hear that, Celia? Is that merely a little hoydenish? Margery, send Miss May to me."
"Yes, mem," answered Margery, wishing with all her heart that she had not heard Miss Linn's bell.
When Gay flashed into the room a moment later both aunts were sewing composedly and neither looked up immediately. Wasting time in the house when the outside world was flooded with August sunshine was not to Gay's taste, but politeness demanded it, so he shifted from one foot to the other like an uneasy chicken, until Miss Linn said,—
"Won't you sit down?"
"I will," said Gay, with emphasis that said, "I will but I don't want to."
"What have you been doing?" questioned Miss Linn.
"Sawing wood," Gay replied, animatedly. "I can saw a stick quite straight. Did you ever try to saw wood, Aunt Beulah?"
Miss Linn did not answer at once; such a question deprived her of speech, but at length she said,—
"Most assuredly not."
"I think you'd like it," said Gay, with increasing animation. "First you put your saw on the stick and it wobbles all around before you can make it stay anywhere. Then, when you have made a little place for the saw, the saw sticks right in it and you pull and up comes the stick and your foot flies off it! Then you begin again and work a little way into the stick and everything goes beautifully till you strike a knot or something and the old saw won't budge an inch! So you lift it out of thehole and begin again—sawing wood is all beginning again; that's the way it's done and pretty, soon away goes the saw, squealing and creaking, and you are so excited at that time that you work away like mad, and, then, all of a sudden the saw goes through, with a sort of surprise and you go on top of it, the stick falls apart—and there you are!"
As Gay illustrated his description as he gave it, using a Venetian dagger for a saw, a Swiss paper-cutter for a stick of wood and a Fayal foot-stool for a saw-horse, the ladies were clearly instructed in the mysteries of wood sawing.
"My dear niece," said Miss Linn, slowly and impressively, "sawing wood is not a fitting employment for a little girl who wants to be a lady when she grows up. I suppose that is what you aspire to be, isn't it?"
Gay's eyes twinkled in appreciation of the situation, as he said,—
"I don't think I care anything about it; and I don't think I could be a lady if I tried."
"But you are willing to try?"
"Yes, I'll try," said Gay, still dimpling.
Poor Miss Linn was so agitated by this brief encounter with her supposed niece that she resolved to postpone the "making over," so she said,—
"You may go out again, but you must not saw any more wood."
"Not just one stick?"
"Not one."
"Very well, Aunt Beulah."
When Gay left the room Miss Linn said, meekly,—
"I really don't know where to begin with her!"
"She has one excellent trait, Beulah; she obeys without question or rebellion."
"I must think about it," said Miss Linn, referring, of course, to "making May over."
But the good lady did not have an opportunity to think about it then; a loud shriek ran through the house, and Margery ran into the room, crying,—
"She's cut off her foot! She's cut off her foot!"
The ladies followed Margery through the house into the back yard, where they saw Gay dancing wildly around on one foot, holding the other up with both hands.
"May, didn't you promise me not to saw wood?"
"I didn't saw it; I chopped it."
"There is no difference," said Miss Linn, meaning in the spirit of the offense.
"Oh, yes, there is; you do one with a saw and the other with an ax!"
Then the hopping ceased suddenly; Gay sank to the ground and there was a great flurry. John ran for the doctor, and Margery bore Gay up-stairs, into the little, white guest-chamber, and laid him on the bed.
May was watering Sarah's asters when Phyllis joined her.
"Phyllis!" cried the delighted young gardener, "I am going to take the whole care of the asters. Think of that! Oh, I like living here ever so much."
"The General wants you right away," said Phyllis.
All the light died out of May's face at these words.
"What can he want of me, Phyllis?"
"I don't know what he wants," said Phyllis, not very encouragingly. "But you must be a little man and meet him like one."
May's face was sad as she said,—
"I shall never be a man and I wish I had never tried to be a boy."
"As long as you are a boy you ought to try to be a manly one," said Phyllis, who played the mentor excellently. "You don't want your brothers and sisters to be ashamed of you."
This was the right chord to touch.
"I won't be a coward if I can help it. My brother always said I had as much pluck as he had, but it has all leaked out somewhere since I've seen Uncle Harold," May said, dolefully.
"The General isn't very terrible—you must just face him right down," replied Phyllis.
This was like telling a mouse to go right up to an elephant and scare him, but it buoyed up May's spirits considerably. She stopped, however, as often as possible in going to the house to make the way seem longer, and at the hall door she made a long pause.
"It isn't that I'm really a coward," the poor child thought. "But I'm not used to being treated as if I had done something awful. And when he shouts at me I forget all about acting like a boy I'm so frightened. But there's no use in putting it off; I've got to go in and take it."
The General was pacing up and down the hall. He appeared to be in an excellent humor; his face beamed with smiles and he rubbed his hands together as if in expectation of some good fortune.
"You sent for me, Uncle Harold," said May, quite bravely.
The General bent his head and went into the library, followed by May, who was beginning to feel apprehensive of the character of the interview.
"Sit down, my boy," said the General, graciously, sitting down himself as he spoke.
May sat down; clasped her hands; tried to look unconcerned and succeeded in looking both uncomfortable and unhappy.
"I will not deny that you have been a great disappointment to me, Gay. From the promise of your babyhood I was led to believe that you would be a gentleman."
The General's manner, as well as his words, seemed to cast a reflection upon somebody, and May was prompt to resent both.
"Father and mother are gentlemen," she said. "That is, father is a gentleman, and it is not their fault if I'm not one."
The General stared slightly. He was not prepared for so spirited an answer, albeit it was rather ludicrous.
"You are come of a family of gentlemen including, of course, your father," the General said, with the air of one who means to keep his temper, no matter what happens. "But I can't retract my statement regarding the disappointment you are to me."
"I do not ask you to, sir," said May, very distinctly.
The General's face grew very red when this cool response met his ears, but he controlled himself, and said,—
"I have said that I perceive defects in your deportment that are lamentable from my point of view; it is my purpose to remedy them."
"How?" May inquired, simply.
"By a course of training," replied the General, with a bland smile.
"Have you written to my father about it?"
"No," answered the General, looking dazed.
"You'd better ask his permission, first."
"Ask his permission," echoed the General, with rising color that boded ill for May. "What do you mean?"
"I don't think my father sent me up here to be trained; I think he thought I was invited to visit here."
"You impudent young jackanapes! Do you refuse to have your bad manners mended?"
"I'm sorry you don't like them, but if they need mending I think my father ought to know it before you begin."
"I am obliged to you, sir, for telling me what I should do, but it is not necessary for a person of your age to dictate to me."
"I did not mean to dictate to you," said May. Then she raised her small brown head proudly and flashed her hazel eyes upon the astonished General, and said,—
"But I couldn't let even you insult my father and mother."
"Insult!" roared the General, springing to his feet.
May rose and faced him. "Yes, sir, insult. You said my manners were bad when you knew father and mother taught me them."
"This is too much!" gasped the General. "Leave the room, sir!"
May obeyed, but no sooner was the threshold crossed than her courageous mien changed to one of sadness, and she walked away with bent head and eyes that would fill with tears in spite of every effort to restrain them.
"What is the matter?" said Sarah, coming upon May suddenly and noticing her tears.
May hid her face in Sarah's spotless lawn apron and cried quietly.
"I don't mean to cry—but I can't help it," she sobbed.
"Cry if you want to; there's no law against it," Sarah said, with characteristic crispness of speech, which somehow did not sound unsympathetic.
Sarah saw the General coming, but of course May did not, for her head was still buried in Sarah's apron, and it was a surprise when he cried with terrible scorn,—
"You have been crying, sir!"
"I have been crying," May admitted, from the folds of the apron, "but I haven't told Miss Sarah how disagreeable you were to me."
Sarah turned her head away to hide the smile this ingenious defense provoked; the General saw the smile and it irritated him.
"Unless you can apologize handsomely, sir," said he, with his grandest air, "you may spend the rest of the day in your room."
May walked away in silence that was more expressive than speech.
"He is the most stubborn boy in the world!" said the General. "He deserved a week in the guard-house."
"You don't understand him," said Sarah. "But you'll find there'll be a tug of war unless you change your tactics."
"His discipline shall begin from this hour," said the General, sternly. "I will not be defied in my own house. Sarah, you will send him nothing but bread and water to-day."
"General," Sarah replied, coolly, "you govern the guard-house but I manage the kitchen! I shall send that boy just what we have to eat, and I may make ice-cream for him, beside."
It was very early, but May was in the garden. The sun was just rising and the morning glories on the back porch turned their purple and rose and white cups to catch the welcome light. The sky was full of rosy clouds; dew glittered on the waving grass and dancing flowers, and the birds were singing as they only sing at dawn.
"What a lovely world this is!" cried May aloud. "If my uncle liked me I should be almost too happy this morning."
"He doesn't dislike you, dear," said Sarah, who had come up softly behind May and had thus overheard her words. May grasped her kind friend by the hand and said, earnestly,—
"I thought that I wouldn't apologize. I have changed my mind, or the dark changed it for me. I think it is perfectly wonderful, how the dark, so still and black, will make you willing to do things that you've said ever so many times in the daytime that you wouldn't do! I am going to apologize because I'm ashamed of myself. Not because heshut me up in my room—I hope he will understand that. I got up early to get braced up for it by the air, and the flowers and the morning."
Sarah understood the feeling that prompted May's early rising; the hours just after dawn have more of inspiration in them than a whole library of books about right living and thinking.
"The General is in the library; why don't you go now?" asked Sarah, brightly.
"I will; and I will be as full of good humor as father and as gentle as mother."
This was undertaking a good deal, but May was in earnest; and to be in earnest is to be armed against almost any enemy.
Much to her own surprise Sarah bent and kissed the mock boy. "Now scamper!" said she. "And come and tell me how well you have kept your word."
The General was reading. A hundred lines of Greek before breakfast was his daily appetizer and he had just completed fifty when May slid into the room.
"Good morning, Uncle Harold!" said she.
"Good morning, my young sir," said the General, with a smile, for "the dark" had worked its marvels with him as well as with May.
The smile settled it!—as a smile will often settle trifling differences if it be allowed—May did not wait for further advances, but sprang into theGeneral's arms and promptly kissed him! The General was amazed, and showed it. He had never been kissed by a child, and his sensations when May's fresh, dewy lips were laid on his were bewildering in their variety. He was embarrassed, of course, for old bachelors are not used to kisses; he was saddened, too, but he was not displeased, and May knew it.
Suddenly a sense of the difference between his life as it was, with its calm, but narrow routine of pleasures, its moments of dulness unbrightened by the companionship of wife and the warm lips and clinging arms of children, and the life that might have been his had he not allowed his youth to slip past him, awoke in him a sting of disgust, of self-pity.
"I hope you are not offended," May said, timidly, for the General's silence was oppressive. "We always kiss mother and father good morning—and—I thought you might like to be treated as well."
"I do like being 'treated as well,'" said the General, heartily.
"I didn't come in for just that; I came to tell you that I am sorry I was so rude to you yesterday. I hope you will excuse me."
"Certainly I will."
"I remembered last night that mother once said something about what people ought to do whenthey were guests in anybody's house. She said it to Alice, not to me, but it was something like this: 'No matter how disagreeable people are when you are visiting them you must always bear it and never resent or mention it to anybody'—and I don't mean to again."
This ingenuous statement amused the General vastly. "That is excellent advice and worthy of your good mother," said he.
"Mother's advice is always excellent," said May, proudly. "When it is hard to take, the way she says it—so calm and sweet—takes the sting out. I don't think we need to learn much except what mother tells us."
"Always think so, my boy," said the General, brokenly.
"Your mother must have been like mine," hazarded May. "How much you must have loved her!"
To speak of his beloved mother was to make a short cut to the General's heart, and at that moment May could have demanded and received any boon of him.
"You were reading when I came in," said May, after a brief pause. "I hope I am not interrupting you."
"Not at all; I learned my lesson fifty years agoand I have not forgotten it."
"What were you reading?" asked May, who was a sad chatterbox when at ease.
"I was reading a classic—do you know what that means?"
"Oh, yes; a classic is a book in a leather binding. Alice studies in them, and I think there must be something very sad inside for I've often seen her crying over them."
"Classics are touching tales to youth. What would you think, Gay, of a goddess who corrected her children with a thunderbolt?"
"I should think that must have been worse than nurse's slipper. What was the goddess' name?"
"Juno."
"Did Juno call her thunderbolt a 'persuader'? That's what nurse called her slipper. Mother wouldn't let nurse use it and nurse didn't like it very well. She said it had been used on little Lord Roslyn and I guess she really thought it was too good to use on us because we haven't titles. But mother didn't believe in a persuader, even if it had persuaded a little English lord, and I'm sure we didn't!"
"I should say not!"
"Oh, Uncle Harold, I came near forgetting to tell you that my training can begin any time you like. I think father will be delighted if I go home with all my defects remedied."
"We will begin right after breakfast," said the General, delighted with this acquiescence.
"Breakfast is ready, sir," said Phyllis at the door.
"Phyllis," cried May in delight, "my uncle has forgiven me, and we are friends—great friends, aren't we, Uncle Harold?"
"Yes, my boy."
"Well," said Phyllis to herself, "it does beat the Dutch how that boy twists round a body's heart!"
"I'm a little hungry, aren't you?" suggested May, with a smile.
Extraordinary spell of a child's face—of its candid smile! The General forgot his dignity, his rigid ideas of deportment; he bent and kissed May's brow, then he said, "Come, dear."
These were strange words for him to speak; he had never said "dear" in his life except as he had coupled it with mother, and he said it under his breath.
May got down from the General's knees and took his hand. "We will go this way to show Miss Sarah that we are friends—I told her that I thought you didn't like me."
As they went along, hand in hand, the General felt awkward. It was the simplest thing in the world to make an excuse for withdrawing his hand, but like many simple things this was hard to do.May's fingers clung to his, and they seemed to have some mysterious connection with May's kiss; both were seals of the new bond between them.
"Miss Sarah!" cried May at the dining-room door, "look at us! You wouldn't think we were the enemies of yesterday, would you? Well, we are not. We are true friends, now—and the training is going to begin right after breakfast."
The training had already begun on both sides.
"The package will keep—though I'm dying to know what is in it—but I must read this letter from my darling G——May, if you will excuse me." And May broke the seal of the dearly-loved brother's letter and began to read before the General could say a word.
It was a characteristic letter; as she read May seemed to see the writer dancing around the room like a will-o'-the-wisp, and speaking the written words without waiting for answer or comment.