"You have a noble place here," said a gentleman to Ruth's brother,
Hyacinth, as he seated himself on the piazza, and his eye lingered first
upon the velvet lawn, (with its little clumps of trees) sloping down to
the river, then upon the feathery willows now dipping their light green
branches playfully into the water, then tossing them gleefully up to the
sunlight; "a noble place," said he, as he marked the hazy outline of the
cliffs on the opposite side, and the blue river which laved their base,
flecked with many a snowy sail; "it were treason not to be poetical
here; I should catch the infection myself, matter-of-fact as I am."
"Do you see that steamer yonder, floating down the river, Lewis?" said
Hyacinth. "Do you know her? No? well she is named 'Floy,' after my
sister, by one of her literary admirers."
"The ----! _your_ sister? '_Floy_'--your _sister_! why, everybody is
going mad to know who she is."
"Exactly," replied Hyacinth, running his white fingers through his
curls; "'Floy' is my sister."
"Why the deuce didn't you tell a fellow before? I have wasted more pens,
ink, and breath, trying to find her out, than I can stop to tell you
about now, and here you have kept as mum as a mouse all the time. What
did you do it for?"
"Oh, well," said Hyacinth, coloring a little, "'Floy' had an odd fancy
for being _incog._, and I, being in her confidence, you know, was on
honor to keep her secret."
"But she _still wishes it kept_," said Lewis; "so her publishers, whom
I have vainly pumped, tell me. So, as far as that goes, I don't see why
you could not have told me before just as well as now."
Hyacinth very suddenly became aware of "an odd craft in the river," and
was apparently intensely absorbed looking at it through his spy-glass.
"Hyacinth! I say, Hyacinth!" said the pertinacious Lewis, "I believe,
after all, you are humbugging me. How _can_ she be your sister? Here's
a paragraph in ---- Sentinel, saying--" and Lewis drew the paper from
his pocket, unfolded it, and put on his glasses with distressing
deliberation: "'We understand that "Floy," the new literary star, was
in very destitute circumstances when she first solicited the patronage
of the public; often wandering from one editorial office to another in
search of employment, while wanting the commonest necessaries of life.'
There, now, how can that be if she is 'your sister'? and you an editor,
too, always patronizing some new contributor with a flourish of
trumpets? Pooh, man! you are hoaxing;" and Lewis jogged him again by the
elbow.
"Beg your pardon, my dear boy," said Hyacinth, blandly, "but 'pon my
honor, I haven't heard a word you were saying, I was so intent upon
making out that craft down the river. I'm a little afraid of that fog
coming up, Lewis; suppose we join Mrs. Ellet in the drawing-room."
"Odd--very odd," soliloquized Lewis. "I'll try him again.--
"Did you read the panegyric on 'Floy' in 'The Inquisitor' of this
morning?" said Lewis. "That paper, you know, is decidedly the highest
literary authority in the country. It pronounces 'Floy's' book to be an
'unquestionable work of genius.'"
"Yes," replied Hyacinth, "I saw it. It is a great thing, Lewis, for a
young writer to be _literarily connected_;" and Hyacinth pulled up his
shirt-collar.
"But I understood you just now that nobody knew she _was_ your sister,
when she first published the pieces that are now collected in that
book," said Lewis, with his characteristic pertinacity.
"There's that craft again," said Hyacinth; "can't you make her out,
Lewis?"
"No--by Jove," replied Lewis, sarcastically; "I can't make anything out.
I never was so be-fogged in my life;" and he bent a penetrating glance
on the masked face before him. "It is past my finding out, at least just
now; but I've a Yankee tongue in my head, so I don't despair, with time
and perseverance;" and Lewis followed Hyacinth into the house.
"Confounded disagreeable fellow," soliloquized Hyacinth, as he handed
him over to a knot of ladies in the drawing-room; "very awkward that
paragraph; I wish I had the fellow who wrote it, at pistol-shot distance
just now; well, if I am badgered on the subject of 'Floy's' poverty, I
shall start a paragraph saying, that the story is only a publisher's
trick to make her book sell; by Jove, they don't corner me; I have got
out of worse scrapes than that before now, by the help of my wits and
the lawyers, but I don't think a paper of any influence would attack me
on that point; I have taken care to secure all the more prominent ones,
long ago, by judicious puffs of their editors in the Irving Magazine.
The only one I fear is the ----, and I will lay an anchor to windward
there this very week, by praising the editor's last stupid editorial.
What an unmitigated donkey that fellow is."