“How well the Parson is looking, Mary,” said Alice, as she stood before
the glass that night, unpinning her collar.
Mary, tired and sleepy as she was, dropped into a chair and shook with
half-unwilling laughter.
“What is the Little Thing laughing at?”
“Alice, you are the hardest case I ever knew. Why do you persist in
turning the man into ridicule?”
“Who, the Pass’n?” for thus she pronounced the word,—and her merry eyes
twinkled.
I doubt whether the reader can guess who the “Pass’n” is. I must
explain, therefore, that when I mentioned to the girls, in Richmond,
that I had found the Don reading the New Testament, Alice had
immediately cried out that now she had it. “He is a Methodist parson in
disguise.” And upon this theme she had ever since been playing
inimitably grotesque variations. Coming down on the boat, notably, she
had surpassed herself; and I hear our party disgraced themselves by
their hilarity. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she had cried out, when first we
had come in view of Elmington,—“ladies and gentlemen,” said she,
leaning out of the carriage window, and declaiming solemnly to the
passengers in the rear vehicle, “in yonder mansion sits meditating, at
this moment, Pass’n Smith, the disguised Methodist divine. He is the
Whitefield of our day. For generations, no exhorter of such
power—especially with sentimental young girls and lonesome widows—
Will some one be so good as to administer restoratives to the Fat Lady?
She seems on the verge of— Where was I?” And so she went on, her young
heart ceaselessly bubbling over with freshness and high spirits.
“Ridicule the Pass’n!” said Alice, dropping into her friend’s lap. “Far
from me the profane idea.” And she smoothed back from Mary’s brow her
loosened hair.
“In the first place, Alice, it is perfectly absurd for you to say he is
a parson; and even if he were,” she continued, after a sharp struggle
with her rising laughter.—“even if he were studying with a view to the
ministry, I don’t see that he should be made fun of on that account. To
my mind,—and you ought to think so too, Alice,—to my mind there is no
nobler spectacle than that of a young man deliberately turning his back
upon all the allurements that lead astray so many of his comrades, and
devoting himself, in the very vigor of his manhood and in all the glory
of his youthful strength, to the service of his God. But as for the
Don,—Mr. Smith I mean,—I think he is about as far from being a parson
as he well could be. Don’t you remember how, when I first met him, I
said I was afraid of him? Well, that feeling grows on me. He may have
his passions well under control, but, you may depend upon it, they would
be terrible if ever they got the mastery over him. Did you ever notice
his teeth, how strong and even they are, and as white as ivory? but do
you know that, at times, when he smiles in that peculiar way of his,
they seem to me to glitter through his moustache like—like—”
“Is the Little Thing afraid the Pass’n will bite her? ’Twould be a
wicked shepherd to bite a little lamb. And if he ever does such a
thing,” she continued, “you go straight and tell your mamma.” And she
dropped her head on Alice’s shoulder and stuck out her mouth like a
three-year-old child.
“Incorrigible scamp!” cried Mary, between laughter-kisses that, like
bubbles, exploded as they touched those pouting lips. “But, Alice, will
you never be serious?”
“Serious?” replied Alice, rising. “I was never more serious in my life.
It wouldn’t be right.”
“What wouldn’t be right?”
“For you to let the Pass’n bite you, without telling your mother,—and
with those glittering teeth too! Think of it! Glittering teeth and
starry eyes! Imagine! Most improper, upon my word!”—and she gave a toss
of her shapely little head. “Mary,” said Alice, dropping again,
suddenly, into her laughing friend’s lap,—“Mary, look me in the eyes!”
From her fine honest face, as well as from her voice,—both changeful as
the dolphin’s hues,—had vanished in an instant all trace of raillery.
Mary looked up with a smile half serious, half inquiring.
“Well?”
“Straight in the eyes!” repeated Alice, lifting her friend’s chin on the
tip of her forefinger.
“I am looking.”
“Mary,” began Alice, leaning forward, and with that same forefinger
daintily depressing the tip of Mary’s nose,
“are—you—quite—sure—that—you—are—not—”
“Not what?”
“Falling in love with Mr. Smith?”
“Alice, what can have put that idea into your head?”
“That sounds more like a question than an answer to a question. Look me
in the eyes and say no,—if you can.”
“Well, _no_, then!”
“No fluttering _here_, when he approaches? no quick breathing when he
speaks to you? no pit-a-pat?”
“No pit-a-pat,—no _anything_! Will that do?”
“Well, I suppose it will have to do,—at least for the present.”
“How ‘for the present’?”
“Never mind,” said Alice, rising; “and now for another question. Is the
Don, so far as you can see, falling in love with _you_?”
“With _me_?” cried Mary, with genuine surprise. “What, pray, will you
ask next? Whether, for example, I do not perceive that Mr. Frobisher is
enamoured of me? No, you will not ask _that_. _Dear Charles_,—well, he
is a nice fellow, I must admit,—and would let you do all the talking.”
And she gave Alice a squeeze, as girls will do, when talking sweethearts
among themselves.
“Mr. Frobisher! Why are you continually harping on him? He has never
said a dozen words to me. But mark my words, that Enigma is interested
in you. He showed it to-day at dinner. You know, my dear, when the humor
strikes you, you talk beautifully—”
“I don’t compare with you, Alice.”
“Never mind about me. This meeting has not been called with a view to
organizing a Mutual-Admiration Society. _You_ are the subject of this
little pow-wow. Now, to-day, at dinner—well, I don’t like to sit here
and flatter you to your face, but I saw very plainly that the Reverend
Mr.—I beg your pardon, the Don, was enraptured with your unconscious
eloquence.”
“_Eloquence_, Alice?” And Mary flushed with ill-concealed delight.
“Yes, Little Dumpling, eloquence.”
“Really?”
“That’s the charm of the thing, goosey; your words flow from you so
easily, that you are unconscious how lovely your language often is.
Then, of course, as none of us know the sound of our own voices, you are
hardly aware how low and musical your voice is.”
“Alice,” said Mary, gravely, “you are making fun of me. You have never
said anything like this to me before. It is not kind,—it really isn’t!”
And her lips quivered.
“You little goose! Not to know me any better than that! Well, to-day you
became so much interested in some subject you were discussing with Mr.
John Whacker that you did not observe, for some time, that every one at
the table was listening to you; and then, when you discovered that you
‘had the floor,’ you blushed furiously and stopped talking.”
“Yes, I remember; it made me feel so foolish!”
“Well, you know, my love, I am very proud of you; and so I was looking
around to see what others thought of you. I give you my word, I nearly
exploded when I caught sight of the Don. There he sat, with an oyster on
the end of his fork poised midway between his plate and his mouth, with
his eyes riveted on you. Put this down in your book, Mary,—this,—as a
maxim on love: ‘Whenever a man forgets the way to his mouth his heart’s
in danger.’”
“I will,” said Mary, shaking with laughter.
“Yes,” continued Alice, standing before the glass and taking down her
hair, “you have a streak of genius, that’s the truth; but it is not the
whole truth.”
“Give me the rest of it.”
Alice, instead of replying, made a face at herself in the glass; then,
folding her arms across her bosom and swaying from side to side two or
three times, sailed off in a waltz around the room.
“The trouble with you, my dear, is simply this,”—and she stood before
her friend with arms akimbo,—“you are devoid of common sense.” And off
she capered again, this time in the rhythm of the polka. “Oh, I’m so
happy!” cried she, clasping her hands and rolling up her eyes.
“Because I have no common sense?”
“Because I have so much! I’ve lots! _Oceans_!” And she spread out her
arms. Catching sight of her own waving arms in the mirror, she, like the
kaleidoscope, changed in an instant. Standing on her left foot, she
described, with the extended toe of her right, an elaborate semicircle,
and ended with a profound courtesy, her young face corrugated,
meanwhile, with that professional grin of the equestrienne, which, among
the horsical, passes for a smile. Turning then to Mary, she repeated the
movement. “Behold,” cried she, drawing herself up to her full
height,—“behold the Empress of the Arena! The Champion Bare-back Rider
of the World!”
“I don’t know so much about the champion part of it, but of the bare
back there can be little doubt.”
“Well said, Little Dumpling! I must admit that my costume is rather
meagre.”
“Alice, you ought to be able to explain it if anybody can,—how do
people come to be ‘privileged characters,’ as they are called? You do
whatever you please, and cut all sorts of crazy antics, and no one ever
thinks you foolish, or even undignified; and then, you say whatever you
think, yet no one can get angry with you. You tell me, to my face, that
I am destitute of common sense—”
“Totally, that’s a fact.”
“And yet I am not the least bit vexed?”
“The simplest thing imaginable. Listen, and I will explain. As to the
crazy antics, as you are pleased to term my joyous, lamb-like friskings,
of course you cannot expect me to have the face to stand up here and say
that they do not offend, because of the bewitching, inborn grace which
characterizes my every movement?”
“Naturally.”
“Of course. And you will naturally pardon my not alluding to what I
can’t help.”
“Poor thing!”
“Of course. I was born so; and that’s the end of that. Now, as to your
not being hurt by my telling you that plain truth about yourself—”
“My destitution as regards—”
“Common sense—yes,—I think you yourself must understand it.”
“Because you told me, first, that I had a streak of genius,—flatterer?”
“Precisely; I credit you with bullion, and you are not worried that I
should deny you the small change of every-day life. You see I am as deep
as Machiavelli,—in other words, as full of common sense as an egg is of
meat. Lucy will not be home,” said she, abruptly veering off from the
line of their talk, as she seated herself on the edge of the bed, “till
the middle of January.”
“No; I am so sorry. What made you think of her?”
“Because I wish she were here right now.”
“Why, pray?”
“Because, from what I saw in Richmond, the Don might devote himself to
her instead of you.”
“Thank you for wishing to rob me of an admirer, as you pretend to deem
him!”
“No, I am glad she is not here. She is so pure and earnest, so
single-minded and devoted, that I should tremble to see her exposed to
such a danger.”
“And I am so—”
“You are what you are, my dear, and I would not have you other. But
there is but one Lucy in the world. You know it and I know it, and
neither of us would think of comparing ourselves with her.”
“Yes, Lucy is a real madonna.”
“And, somehow, I am not,—you may speak for yourself. Yes, I am glad she
is not here. I’ll tell you, Mary: I wish he would fall in love with
me,—I’ve got so much hard sense that I should never think of
reciprocating. However,” added she, resting her head in her hand, while
her elbow and fair, plump arm sank in the pillow, “I am not so sure. I,
too, am human. Perhaps it would be too much for me. He is tall,” she
continued, looking dreamily into space,—“he is
distinguished-looking!—so brave!—so mysterious!—perhaps I haven’t as
much sense as I thought,”—and she seemed to nod,—“and his teeth are so
like stars! and his rows of eyes are so even and white! glitter so!—Am
I asleep? Mary, my love,” cried she, bouncing off the bed, “are you
going to talk all night? Talk on,—but I’ll tell you what I am going to
do. I shall straightway put on my little N. G.,—the toggery, to wit, of
repose; and then I shall fall on my little knees and say my little
prayers; which done, I shall curl up my little self in my little bed,
and know no more till the rising-bell. One word with you, however. Mary,
do you know what all I have been saying to you means?”
“I don’t know what any of it means,—not one word; nor do you, I should
imagine.”
“Then listen! All that I have said and done and danced to-night means
this, and this only. The Pass’n is going to fall in love with you.
That’s the Pass’n’s affair, and shows his good taste. Now, who on earth
is the Pass’n? Do you see? Well, don’t you go and fall in love with him,
now mind! _don’t_,—that’s a good, wise girl. Good-night!”