"Miss Jennings,--Miss Jane Jennings," he repeated, with emphasis.
James surveyed the visitor from his jaunty straw hat to his neat
patent-leathers, cast a queer look at the crocodile card-case, replied,
"Humph! I'll see," and shut the door in his face.
"Infernal impudence, by Jove!" exclaimed Dudley, in wrath. "Does the
dolt take me for a tramp?" There was nothing for it, however, but to
wait where he was, which he did with bad grace enough until he heard a
hand upon the inner knob and saw the door slowly open, to disclose the
generous proportions of Mabel's maid.
"The old woman, by the gods!" he whispered, in dismay.
"I called--" he began.
"Yes, sir," replied Jane, in a flutter of excitement.
"I called--er--I have the pleasure of addressing Mrs. Jennings, I
presume?"
"_Miss_ Jennings,--Jane Jennings," she corrected, and blushing at the
title.
Dudley stared open-mouthed. "_Miss_ Jennings! Jane Jennings!" he
repeated, in astonishment. Then a terrible possibility dawned upon him.
A cold perspiration broke out all over him. Oh, god of love, was this
his precious Jennie? Had he made an irrevocable ass of himself over this
lump of ancient human flesh? A hue of brilliant scarlet suffused his
countenance. Oh, what an imbecile, a simple, drivelling idiot, he had
been!
"Was it me that you wished to see, sir?" she asked, wondering at his
strange manner.
"No!" he answered fiercely. "I think there must be some mistake," he
added more calmly, struggling to repress his feelings. "Very sorry to
have--er--Good-day." He turned suddenly, and, without another glance at
his long-lost Jennie, quickly gained the road and the welcome cover of
the hedge.
His uppermost feeling was undoubtedly that of anger mixed with
mortification, and he swore with sublime eloquence at his own folly as
soon as he was out of ear-shot of the house; but the ludicrous side of
his situation could not but strike him before he had gone many steps,
and he laughed grimly in spite of himself while repeating the
undeniable assertion that he had been a lamentable fool.
As he swung himself into his saddle prepared to shake the dust of
Stillton that very night from his feet, a voice came to him through the
semi-obscurity:
"Hold on, there! Hold on, I say!"
He gave his nag a good kick in the flank and urged him to the top of his
speed.
"Hold on there! Dudley! Hold on!"
He was recognized--caught! That cursed photograph of his! "Go on, you
brute, go on!" he cried to his sorry beast. There was not much speed in
him, however, and a minute later footsteps were quickly overtaking him.
"I say, Dudley! Don't you know me?" panted his pursuer.
He turned for an instant in his saddle. Why! Could he believe his eyes?
Surely it was Manton! He reined in.
"Why, Manton, old boy, what--"
"Dudley, what on earth brings you here?" gasped Manton.
"That's just what I've been trying to find out, Manton. Take my oath I
don't know."
"Humph!" ejaculated Manton, fixing his eyes curiously upon his friend.
"I don't," reiterated Dudley.
"No girl in the case?" suggested Manton significantly.
"Girl!" He laughed uneasily. Could Manton be in the joke? "No," he
answered, "I can safely say that there is not," the figure of the old
nurse clearly in his mind.
"Come, now, Dudley," said Manton; "perhaps I know more about your
affairs than you think I do. She was frightfully cut up this morning,
and I think your letter did it."
"Cut up, was she? Ha! ha! Cut up! She appeared to be in one pretty
substantial piece just now, notwithstanding."
"Look here, Dudley; get off that horse and come over to the farm for
supper. There's something wrong. I want to have a talk with you. Now,
there has been some misunderstanding, hasn't there?"
"Well, I confess I was rather taken in."
"Taken in! Nonsense! Do you imagine she would take you in?"
"It struck me that she might, boots and all," replied Dudley, with a sad
grin.
"Do talk sense, Dudley. It's a pity that this should have occurred."
"A d--d shame, I call it."
"I would swear that she loves you, Dud."
"Really, I suppose I ought to feel flattered; but, somehow, Manton, I
can't get up much enthusiasm over _her_. She's not exactly my style."
"You're very fastidious, then. Here, come this way through the wood:
it's a short cut. I confess my experience has been very much more
limited than yours, but _I_ never saw a girl more--"
"A what?" asked Dudley, with a sneer.
"A young lady, then,--more charming, more lovely in every respect, than
Miss Moreley."
"Miss who? Moreley? (I believe he has got one of those wandering fits,
poor fellow!) Well, Manton, old boy, I won't dispute that for a moment,
because--"
"Yet you say that she is not 'your style.'"
"Oh, I must get him home immediately," sighed Dudley inwardly,
commiserating his friend.
"She talks of you incessantly, Dud, and only seems happy when I am
answering her thousand and one questions about you."
(A young lady hidden among the rocks and pines blushes crimson as this
speech is wafted to her on the still evening air, and stamps her little
foot in vexatious indignation.)
"Her manner to-day," continued Manton, "showed plainly that your letter
this morning hurt her exceedingly."
"Miss Moreley! Letter this morning! _My_ letter! Come, now. By Jove!
Stop a moment. I believe-- Tell me, did you ever chance to see her
handwriting?"
"Yes: I've mailed several of her letters to you."
"You don't say so! Is that her writing?"
"Yes."
Dudley muttered something incoherent about "little wretch!" "Jane
Jennings!" and, pointing excitedly to the scene of his recent
discomfiture, asked, "Lives there, doesn't she?"
Manton, too astonished at his friend's remarkable conduct to speak,
nodded assent, and Dudley hastened away toward the house, shouting back,
"I'll see you later, old fellow!"
"Oh, don't! don't! don't!" came a shrill voice from among the rocks.
Both turned. "Why, here she is now!" cried Manton.
There was an awkward pause. The blush upon her face detracted nothing
from her beauty. Dudley felt drawn toward her as a needle is drawn by
the North Star. He walked quickly toward her, hesitated as she drew
back, stopped as she cast her eyes upon the ground, and presently said,
"Life would be a very sad thing, would it not, if we had no pleasant
memories of the past? I believe the thoughts of those happy days of our
childhood are the sweetest I have ever had. It brings them back to me
very vividly to find you now after so many years. Won't you even shake
hands with your old playmate?"
She put out her hand shyly and reluctantly, and he took it in both of
his.
"I'll walk on, Dud, and put this horse of yours in the barn," said
Manton. "I'll come back presently." And he left them, feeling that
perhaps the reconciliation which he was looking forward to between them
would be more complete if they were left alone.
"Are you angry with me for coming?" asked Dudley softly, when he had
gone.
"You should not have done it," she answered.
"Were we never to meet?"
"Never."
"Then I am glad I took matters into my own hands," said he, laughing.
"But you must go to-night--now."
"Impossible."
The subject gave rise to considerable argument, at the end of which,
however, Dudley remained as determined as before, and, as a matter of
fact, he did stay, accepting Farmer Manton's hospitable invitation to
make his house his home. He would stay a week, he said; he had no
immediate pressing engagements, and his delight at being with his old
friend Manton once more was too great to admit of his leaving
immediately upon finding him.
The week proved to be a delightful one. Farmer Manton's buxom daughters
got up one of their celebrated "flare-ups" in his honor, and all the
female population of Stillton was set by its ears. Mabel was not
present, of course,--fortunately, too, perhaps, for her state of heart
and mind was strangely and unnaturably irritable at that time, and his
promiscuous attentions to the various country belles might have provoked
a feeling of which she would afterward have been very much ashamed.
The week was over, yet he lingered. The sea-breezes, he declared, were
just the sort of tonic he needed, and the quiet country-life the very
thing he had been longing for for years.
One day, after an introduction by Farmer Manton to Mr. Moreley, he
enlarged so eloquently upon the benefits of such an atmosphere, and
spoke so feelingly about the ailments to which the latter considered
himself a martyr, that the old gentleman's heart actually warmed toward
him, and he violated all the laws of his monotonous existence and one of
Dr. Nevercure's most specific instructions by inviting him to dinner.
"How did you do it?" asked Mabel, with an incredulous smile, when he
told her down on the beach that afternoon of his unexpected success with
the much-feared parent.
"Oh, it's my fatal fascination, I suppose," he answered exasperatingly.
The weeks that followed were passed much as all of us have passed some
happy weeks of our own lives, and the rest of their story is but the old
one once more repeated.
Dudley persistently maintains to this day that there is much more in a
name than is generally conceded, but his young wife ridicules such
nonsense, saying that it was nothing but a random shot that chanced to
hit the mark. A significant fact is that the boy has been named plain
John, after their never-to-be-forgotten friend John Manton.