MY LADY.
"I would like to see my lady."
It was an imperious demand, that every one in the Dering household had
become used to, likewise, to the speaker, a mite of humanity, with
wicked big blue eyes, a pug nose, and a frowzled head of brown curls.
She was dressed to day, in a long white fur cloak, a cap of the same,
and a mite of a muff, with scarlet silk tassels, and hung to her neck
with a broad scarlet ribbon; and she had rung the bell with her own wee
hand, and presented her message, in that imperative way, that indicated
a spoiled, but precious specimen of babydom.
"I do hope you will forgive us," said the smiling faced young lady, who
accompanied her. "We don't intend to come every day, but mother made
some delicious chocolate cake yesterday, and I thought possibly Miss
Ernestine might relish a taste of it, with some of my wine jelly; and
when I spoke of bringing it, Pansy heard me, and insisted on coming too;
so here we are."
"How very kind you are," said Bea, taking the dainty wicker basket,
knotted with scarlet ribbons, and peeping in at its fancy glass of
moulded jelly, the delicious cake, and a bunch of hot-house flowers. "We
should be glad to see you every day; how could we help it, when you
always come laden like a good angel!"
"I would like--to--see--my--lady!" repeated Pansy, with impressive
dignity, and some severity of manner; for what did she care about jelly,
and good angels, and all that. "I haven't seen her since the other day
before yesterday morning."
"You shall see her right away," laughed Bea, setting down the basket.
"Excuse me a moment, Miss Clara, Kittie is busy in the kitchen. I'll
take Pansy out there, before we go up stairs."
Kittie was pealing apples, and meditating on how she would trim her hat,
since it had to be trimmed over, and nothing new to do it with; but she
put all such thoughts aside when she saw her visitor, and made a seat
for her on the bench.
"I 'spect I'm most gladder to see you than I ever was before," said
Pansy, with a devoted smile, as she took her seat near Kittie.
"Why, what are you sitting there for? Here I am," said Kat, who sat
opposite slicing apples. "I thought you always knew me."
Pansy looked from one to the other, for a moment, then nestled close to
Kittie, as she remarked with decision:
"You're not my lady; you're the other one."
"How do you know?"
"Well, I 'spect I couldn't jes tell, but then you are."
"I shouldn't wonder if you were right, but I want to tell you that you
mustn't love Kittie so much; she's mine, and I'm jealous," said Kat,
with a foreboding shake of her head.
"But she keeped the bear from eating me up," cried Pansy, with unshaken
belief that she would have been forever lost except for Kittie's timely
arrival. "I jes never'd seen my papa once any more, 'f she hadn't finded
me in the woods; and he said I ought to love her jes as much more as
ever I could, and I _do_," accompanying the assertion with a loving
clasp of Kittie's arm, the suddenness of which sent her apple spinning
across the floor.
"There, see; I'll get it," she cried, running after it, with a
triumphant glance at Kat. "'F I'd knocked your apple, you'd a scolded
me."
"Oh, no; I'm an angel," laughed Kat. "Kittie's the one that scolds."
"Do you?" asked Pansy, leaning against Kittie, with a devotion that
nearly knocked the whole pan of apples over.
"I never scolded you, did I?" asked Kittie.
"No, but Auntie Raymond says I mind you the bestest of anybody. I think
I do. I 'spect it's because I love you best, right up next to my papa;
do you love me?"
"Ever so much."
"Well, I don't know what I'll do," said Pansy, with a long sigh, after
she expressed a little rapture over the assurance. "My papa said the
other day, what I'd do when we went back to the city 'thout you, and I
said I was going to take you along; 'll you go?"
"How could I? Leave my mama and sisters?"
"But don't you love me 'n my papa?"
"I love you a very great deal."
"'N not my papa?"
"I think he's a very nice gentleman, and that you ought to be a very
good little girl, and love him lots and lots."
Pansy drew back, and slowly surveyed her idol, as though she had just
discovered the first flaw. "I think you might love him, too," she said
with a grieved air, and some resentment.
"If she loved him, she wouldn't love you so much," said Kat, slyly.
"Then I'm glad you don't," exclaimed Pansy, with sudden satisfaction,
and returning to her seat with an enraptured smile.
There was no mistaking the child's devotion. She firmly believed that
Kittie had saved her from being lost forever, and on the foundation of
her great gratitude, she had built an overwhelming love, that expressed
itself in various ways. She never let any one of the family come to town
without bringing flowers, and she insisted on coming in at least three
times a week, herself; and it may be remarked, that whatever Pansy set
her mind on, she did.
Between aunts, uncles, and cousins, and a father, who was rapidly coming
to the conclusion that she was the most wonderful child alive, she was
in a fair way of being spoiled, and had finally come to where she ruled
the household with the most imperious little will, which every one
submitted to, and thought delightful.
Twice since the picnic, she had come with her papa, in the phaeton, and
taken Kittie to ride, and three times, Mr. Murray had come in the long
summer evenings, and brought her to spend an hour or two; and there
Kittie's acquaintance with him ceased.
In the rides, he had talked to her but little, preferring to listen to
the unbroken chatter which Pansy kept up with her. And then he saw, that
to her, he appeared in a fatherly guise, which made her feel perfectly
free and unrestrained, and he thought it best to leave it so for the
present.
His calls in the evenings had been entirely devoted to Mrs. Dering. They
would sit on the porch, in proper, elderly fashion, sometimes joined by
Bea, while the twins and Pansy would roam about the yard, and play
together like three children, and Mr. Murray would have nothing to say
to the one he really came to see except "Good evening, Miss Kittie,"
when he came, and when he left.
No one, except his own sister, suspected in the least that anything took
him there save a desire to accompany Pansy, whose absorbing devotion
everyone in Canfield knew by this time.
Mr. Murray was quick to see that in the mother's eyes, Kittie and Kat
were the merest children, and that a thought of any other kind in
connection with them, would not be harbored for an instant; and he also
saw, that never a girlish heart was freer from anything of loves or
lovers, than Kittie's, and so long as it was so, he was quite content to
let it remain, and watch it grow to maturity. There was no denying that
he was strangely and powerfully interested in her, wonder and laugh at
the idea, as he would, though he could not yet think that the feeling
had assumed the name of love. It was only that respect and interest that
comes to the heart of man when he meets a woman, lovely, fresh-hearted,
and unselfishly sweet.
The approaching dignity of sixteen lay over the girls, and while Kat was
still a most thoroughly romping tom-boy, Kittie was wonderfully womanly,
with pretty, graceful, lady-like ways, the sweetest possible voice, and
the loveliest eyes that ever looked, with girlish innocence, into the
face of the man who felt that love her he could, and love her he would,
in spite of himself.
There was something irresistibly attractive and sweet to Paul Murray, in
watching the love between his little daughter and the young girl.
Kittie's slightest word was law to Pansy; and there was something so
womanly in the way she exercised her influence, and made the child's
love a source of benefit unto her spoiled, wayward little self.
When fall drifted into the chilly reign of winter, Mr. Murray went back
to the city. He had intended going long before, but had put it off, a
week at a time, until winter had finally come; then he decided with a
sudden determination, and, as if to test his firmness of purpose, had
slipped away from Pansy, and galloped into town, trusting to the
darkness to hide from Canfield's prying eyes, that he was coming to the
Dering's alone. Not that he cared; oh, no, he would just as soon have
heralded to every soul therein that it was so, but for Kittie's sake,
it was best to give no one's tongue a chance to wag. Many a bud is
rudely hastened into blossom by impatient fingers, and withers from the
shock; it must not be so now.
He fastened his horse at the gate, and went slowly up the walk,
wondering a little if they would be surprised. A bright light came from
Ernestine's window, and out from down stairs, falling across the porch
floor; and before ringing the bell, he paused a moment, and looked in.
How bright and homelike everything looked, and there, before the grate,
stood the very object of his visit, making the prettiest picture
imaginable, with a big kitchen apron on, her sleeves rolled up, and
reading a letter. He knew it was Kittie, in a moment, for in her hair
was a knot of scarlet ribbon, and the foot resting on the fender wore a
bow, of the same color, astride its slippered toe--little niceties that
Kat, was seldom, if ever, guilty of.
Beatrice answered his ring, and tried to look as though she had not
expected some one else, some one who would have given her a more cordial
greeting, than "Good evening, Miss Dering."
"Good evening, Mr. Murray; walk in, please, and I will call mama," said
Bea, ushering him into the sitting-room, with some little wonder, and
going up stairs.
Kittie had vanished with her letter; but as Mr. Murray sat down, he saw
the envelope on the table, and immediately experienced the most
peculiar and unpleasant sensation, on observing the masculine scrawls
thereon. What gentleman was writing to her? he wondered, with quick
resentment; and the next moment Kittie came in, and found him studying
that envelope closely. She had thrown off her apron, and let down her
sleeves, and he thought she looked prettier the other way, though he
found that either way she was suddenly invested with a stronger
attraction than ever; for a little competition will always make us more
eager, and the star of our desire much brighter. He explained, with a
laugh, as they sat down, that he had just been admiring the free, easy
chirography on the envelope; which same was a fib of first degree, but
then--
"It is Cousin Ralph's; I think it beautiful," said Kittie, unconsciously
obliging, but giving no relief, for Mr. Murray's mind went back to the
day he met "Cousin Ralph," handsome, manly fellow, and he remembered
that it was only second cousin, and that Ralph had been very attentive
to Kittie at the picnic, and that--oh, what didn't he think, all in a
few minutes; and how true it is that
"Trifles light as air, are to the jealous,
Confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ."
The rebound from a feeling of perfect security to one of miserable
doubt, at finding the field already taken, nearly drove Mr. Murray into
a precipitancy that he might have regretted forever. As it was, he
answered Kittie's inquiries for Pansy, in a pre-occupied way, that was
surprising, and seemed too much pleased with that envelope to ever lay
it down; and yet, with all his looking, he failed to discover that the
name, in a maze of flourishes, was Miss Kathleen Dering, instead of Miss
Katherine. Just so do we make up our minds to see things in a certain
light, and see them so, in spite of fate.
How pleasant it was, sitting there in the warm firelight, with Kittie
opposite, in the low rocking chair, and no one else near. It seemed so
homelike and sweet to this man who had no fireside of his own, and only
a memory of one short, happy year, when another girlish face and heart,
not unlike Kittie's, had been all his own. He wished now, that no one
else would come in to spoil this cozy chat; but they did, in just a
moment--Mrs. Dering and Bea; and Kittie resigned the low rocker, for a
corner over on the lounge, to his great regret.
They all heard with polite and honest expressions of regret, that he was
going to leave for the city on the next day; but after hearing that he
was going to leave Pansy behind, Kittie was quite satisfied.
"I have no home, you know," he said, looking at Mrs. Dering, with an
expression that caused her kindly heart to pity him. "I shall board,
and be hard at work 'till late every night, and poor little Pansy would
have a dreary life with a hired nurse. Besides, the influences
surrounding her would not be such as I would like. So Sister Julia has
kindly promised to keep her until I can make some arrangements, and
become a little settled."
He staid for some time; promised to call in and see Olive, who had gone
to her studies at last; and then he rose to leave. If he held Kittie's
hand a little longer than any of the others, no one noticed it; and if,
in that good-bye, his eyes went to her face less guarded in their
expression than usual, no one noticed that either, because no one
dreamed of such a thing.
"May I have Pansy with me as often as I want her?" asked Kittie, just
before he left.
"Certainly; I shall always be pleased to hear that you still love the
child, and that she is sometimes with you," he answered, lingering, as
if loth to go. But at that instant a step was heard on the porch, and a
certain expression in Bea's face warned him that the sitting-room would
now be in demand; whereupon he gave a hasty good-bye, and left; not
without a little envy for Dr. Barnett, who entered at the same moment,
and who came, in the full assurance of recognized right, such as was not
yet Paul Murray's.
Of course, the family discreetly retired, after a few words of greeting
to the young man, and while the cozy sitting-room took unto itself these
"Two souls with but a single thought,"
the others went up to Ernestine's room to finish the evening.