GOOD-NIGHT
When the three young people had been sitting for half an hour on the wide
piazza of Cobhurst, enjoying the moonlight effects and waiting for the
return of Dr. Tolbridge, Miriam, who was reclining in a steamer chair,
ceased making remarks, but very soon after she became silent she was
heard again, not speaking, however, but breathing audibly and with great
regularity. Ralph and Dora turned toward her and smiled.
"Poor little thing," said the latter in a low voice; "she must be
tired out."
"Yes," said Ralph, also speaking in an undertone, "she was up very early
this morning, and has been at some sort of work ever since. I do not
intend that this shall happen again. You must excuse her, Miss
Bannister,--she is a girl yet, you know."
"And a sweet one, too," said Dora, "with a perfect right to go to sleep
if she chooses. I should be ashamed of myself if I felt in the least
degree offended. Do not let us disturb her until the doctor comes; the
nap will do her good."
"Suppose, then," said Ralph, "that we take a little turn in the
moonlight. Then we need not trouble ourselves to lower our voices."
"That will be very well," said Dora, "but I am afraid she may take cold,
although the night air is so soft. I think I saw a lap robe on a table
in the hall; I will spread that over her."
Ralph whispered that he would get the robe, but motioning him back, and
having tiptoed into the hall and back again, Dora laid the light covering
over the sleeping girl so gently that the regular breathing was not in
the least interrupted. Then they both went quietly down the steps, and
out upon the lawn.
"She is such a dear girl," said Dora, as they slowly moved away, "and
although we only met to-day, I am really growing very fond of her, and I
like her the better because there is still so much of the child left in
her. Do not you like her the better for that, Mr. Haverley?"
Ralph did agree most heartily, and it made him happy to agree on any
subject with a girl who was even more beautiful by moonlight than by
day; who was so kind, and tended to his sister, and whose generous
disposition could overlook little breaches of etiquette when there was
reason to do so.
As they walked backward and forward, not very far away from the piazza,
and sometimes stopping to admire bits of the silver-tinted landscape,
Dora, with most interesting deftness, gave Ralph further opportunity of
knowing her. With his sister as a suggesting subject, she talked about
herself; she told him how she, too, had lost her parents early in life,
and had been obliged to be a very independent girl, for her stepmother,
although just as good as she could be, was not a person on whom she could
rely very much. As for her brother, the dearest man on earth, she had
always felt that she was more capable of taking care of him, at least in
all matters in home life, than he of her.
"But I have been very happy," she went on to say, "for I am so fond of
country life, and everything that belongs to it, that the more I have to
do with it, the better I like it, and I really begrudge the time that I
spend in the city. You do not know with what pleasure I look forward to
helping Miriam get breakfast to-morrow morning. I consider it a positive
lark. By the way, Mr. Haverley, do you like rolled omelets?"
Ralph declared that he liked everything that was good, and had no doubt
that rolled omelets were delicious.
"Then I shall make some," said Dora, "for I know how to do it. And I
think you said, Mr. Haverley, that the coffee to-night was too strong."
"A little so, perhaps," said Ralph, "but it was excellent."
"Oh, it shall be better in the morning. I am sure it will be well for one
of us to do one thing, and the other another. I will make the coffee."
"You are wonderfully kind to do anything at all," said Ralph, and as he
spoke he heard the clock in the house strike ten. It was agreeable in the
highest degree to walk in the moonlight with this charming girl, but he
felt that it was getting late; it was long past Miriam's bedtime, and he
wondered why the doctor did not come.
Dora perceived the perturbations of his mind; she knew that he thought it
was time for the little party to break up, but did not like to suggest
it. She knew that the natural and proper thing for her to do was to wake
up Miriam, and that the two should bid Ralph good-night, and leave him to
sit up and wait for the doctor as long as he felt himself called upon to
do so, but she was perfectly contented with the present circumstances,
and did not wish to change them just yet. It was a pleasure to her to
walk by this tall, broad-shouldered young fellow, who was so handsome and
so strong, and in so many ways the sort of man she liked, and to let him
know, not so much by her words, as by the incited action of his own
intelligence, that she was fond of the things he was fond of, and that
she loved the life he led.
As they still walked and talked, the thought came to Dora, and it was a
very pleasing one, that she might act another part with this young
gentleman; she had played the cook, now for a while she could play the
mistress, and she knew she could do it so gently and so wisely that he
would like it without perceiving it. She turned away her face for a
moment; she felt that her pleasure in acting the part of mistress of
Cobhurst, even for a little time, was flushing it.
"Suppose," she said, "we walk down to the road, and if we see or hear the
doctor coming, we can wait there and save him the trouble of driving in."
They went out of the Cobhurst gateway, but along the moonlighted highway
they saw no approaching spot, nor could they hear the sounds of wheels.
"I really think, Mr. Haverley," said Dora, turning toward the house,
"that I ought to go and arouse Miriam, and then we will retire. It is a
positive shame to keep her out of her bed any longer."
This suggestion much relieved Ralph, and they walked rapidly to the
porch, but when they reached it they found an empty steamer chair and no
Miriam anywhere. They looked at each other in much surprise, and
entering the house they looked in several of the rooms on the lower
floor. Ralph was about to call out for his sister, but Dora quickly
touched him on the arm.
"Hush," she said, smiling, "do not call her. Do you see that lap robe on
the table? I will tell you exactly what has happened; while we were down
at the road she awoke, at least enough to know that she ought to go to
bed, and I really believe that she was not sufficiently awake to remember
that I am here, and that she simply got up, brought the robe in with her,
and went to her room. Isn't it funny?"
Ralph was quite sure that Dora's deductions were correct, for when Miriam
happened to drop asleep in a chair in the evening, it was her habit, when
aroused, to get up and go to bed, too sleepy to think about anything
else; but he did not think it was funny now. He was mortified that Miss
Bannister should have been treated with such apparent disrespect, and he
began to apologize for his sister.
"Now, please stop, Mr. Haverley," interrupted Dora. "I am so glad to have
her act so freely and unconventionally with me, as if we had always been
friends. It makes me feel almost as if we had known each other always,
and it does not make the slightest difference to me. Miriam wanted to
give me another room, but I implored her to let me sleep with her in that
splendid high-posted bedstead, and so all that I have to do is to slip up
to her room, and, if I can possibly help it, I shall not waken her. In
the morning I do not believe she will remember a thing about having gone
to bed without me. So good-night, Mr. Haverley. I am going to be up very
early, and you shall see what a breakfast the new cook will give you. I
will light this candle, for no doubt poor Miriam has put out her lamp, if
she did not depend entirely on the moonlight. By the way, Mr. Haverley,"
she said, turning toward him, "is there anything I can do to help you in
shutting up the house? You know I am maid of all work as well as cook.
Perhaps I should go down and see if the kitchen fire is safe."
"Oh, no, no!" exclaimed Ralph; "I attend to all those things,--at least,
when we have no servant."
"But doesn't Miriam help you?" asked Dora, taking up the candle which she
had lighted.
"No," said he; "Miriam generally bids me good-night and goes upstairs an
hour before I do."
"Very well," said Dora; "I will say only one more thing, and that is that
if I were the lord of the manor, who had been working in the hay-field
all day, I would not sit up very long, waiting for a wandering doctor."
Ralph laughed, and as she approached the door of the stairway, he opened
it for her.
"Suppose," she said, stopping for a moment in the doorway, and shielding
the flame of the candle from a current of air with a little hand that
was so beautifully lighted that for a moment it attracted Ralph's eyes
from its owner's face, "you wait here for a minute, and I will go up and
see if she is really safe in her own room. I am sure you will be better
satisfied if you know that."
Ralph looked his thanks, and softly, but quickly, she went up the stairs.
At a little landing she stopped.
"Do you know," she whispered, looking back, with the candle throwing her
head and hair into the prettiest lights and shadows, "I think this
stairway is lovely;" and then she went on and disappeared.
In a few minutes she leaned over the upper part of the banisters and
softly spoke to him.
"She is sleeping as sweetly and as quietly as the dearest of angels. I do
not believe I shall disturb her in the least. Good-night, Mr. Haverley."
And with her face thrown into a new light,--this time by the hall lamp
below,--she smiled ever so sweetly, and then drew back her head. In half
a minute it reappeared. She was right; he was still looking up.
"I forgot to say," she whispered, "that all the windows in Miriam's room
are open. Do you think she was too sleepy to notice that, or is she
accustomed to so much night air?"
"I really do not know," said Ralph, in reply.
"Very well, then," said Dora; "I will attend to all that in my own way.
Good-night again, Mr. Haverley;" and with a little nod and a smile, she
withdrew her face from his view.
If she had come back within the next minute, she would have found him
still looking up. She felt quite sure of this, but she could think of no
good reason for another reappearance.
Ralph lighted a pipe and sat down on the piazza. He looked steadily in
front of him, but he saw no grass, no trees, no moonlighted landscape, no
sky of summer night. He saw only the face of a young girl, leaning over
and looking down at him from the top of a stairway. It was the face of a
girl who was so gentle, so thoughtful for others, so quick to perceive,
so quick to do; who was so fond of his sister, and so beautiful. He sat
and thought of the wondrous good fortune that had brought this girl
beneath his roof, and had given him these charming hours with her.
And when his pipe was out, he arose, declared to himself that, no matter
what the doctor might think of it, he would not wait another minute for
him, and went to bed,--his mind very busy with the anticipation of the
charming hours which were to come on the morrow.