THAT CLAM BAKE.
He walked fast. I followed him with reluctant footsteps. What did I care
for clam-bakes or any other new-fangled vegetable while he was by my
side?
The crowd were all around that heap of sea-weed when we came up. Men,
women, Irish help, and nig--well, colored freemen, with eager eyes and
open mouths, were waiting for the sail-cloth to be taken off. On the
grass, under the trees, a great long table was set out with plates,
glasses, castors, and things. At the end, two pails of ice, with the
necks of a dozen bottles peeping up like hungry birds in a nest, stood
ready for somebody to uncork.
Well, the nig--freedman gave that sail a jerk, and a cloud of salty
steam rolled up from the sea-grass. Then he raked away a winrow of that,
dug out a pail of melted butter and vinegar, and held a lobster up by
one claw, looking red as a British soldier's jacket. The creature had
given up fighting, and hung in his hand meek as Moses. The poor thing
was green enough when he went in, but came out blazing red and steaming
hot.
More sea-weed; chickens dripping with gravy; heaps of corn; potatoes,
mealy, and broken open; fish, and then those longish-round shell
things, heaped in plates and dishes, were carried off to the table. We
followed those dishes; we sat down to eat. Those longish hard-shelled
creatures had all burst open, and something that smelt delicious lay
inside, with black heads sticking out.
I watched to see what the rest did with those animals, then seized one
by the head, drew him out, soused him in the melted butter, and dropped
him softly into my open mouth.
"Delicious, scrumptious, beyond anything I ever ate in my life," says I,
when Mr. Burke leaned toward me and wanted to know how I liked it. "But
what are these black-headed things with shells, called?"
"Oh, soft-shells--the best part of the clam-bake, I think," says he.
"I reckon you are right," says I, taking another little fellow by the
nape of the neck, and biting him off at the shoulders. Then I drank a
glass of the sparklingest cider you ever tasted, and went in for an ear
of corn, smoking hot, and the breast of a chicken.
Mr. Burke wanted me to eat some of the red lobster, but the thought of
it made me creep all over, so I asked to be excused, and said I
preferred a dozen or two more soft-shells.
There was a good deal of first-rate cider drank around that table, and
we left a bushel of open shells under the trees, besides a heap of
lobsters, clams, and chicken bones, well picked.
Then we went back to look at the place where they had been cooked, and
found nothing but a heap of smoking stones, a ring of burnt grass, and a
pile of steamy sea-weed. Somehow, the sight of it all made me feel sort
of faint, and it didn't seem to me that I should ever want to eat or
drink again.
We went home from Pleasure Bay in the carriage, feeling lazy and kind of
half sea-sick.
That night I dreamed that a whole regiment of green lobsters were
crawling over my bed, clawing at me fiercely as they went. Then I
thought that Mr. Burke came and shoved them off with both arms flung
out, and invited me to breakfast on a heap of empty shells, dipped in
butter, which set awful heavy on my stomach.
In fact, I had a worrying night, and got up feeling as if I had been
feasting on tenpenny nails and roasted flat-irons.
XCVII.
ONE HOUR OF HEAVEN.
Dear sisters:--You haven't the least idea of what warm weather is in
Vermont. Why, if one of your mountain trout streams could have run
through New York, it would have boiled over and cooked the poor little
speckled creatures that live in its waves. You never saw anything like
it in your born days. The sea breezes at Long Branch seemed to come over
an ocean of melted lead, blasted up by some old furnace of a volcano.
For one whole week I was just dying of envy, when I thought of the pigs
roving loose in our village, with such lovely mud puddles to lie down
in, without caring a sumarke whether their clothes were mussed--excuse
that word, I got it here in York--or not.
While I was panting for breath on the sea-shore, I could think of them,
with home-sick longing, up to their throats in the soft, mushy fluid of
a delicious puddle, with swarms of yellow butterflies rising, floating,
and settling around them, as if a bed of primroses had got tired of
growing in one place, and had burst off on a grand spree through the
air, settling down for a drink now and then.
Yes, sisters, I was brought, in the hot blast of those summer days, to a
state of unchristian envy, and would have been glad to swap places with
flounders, or have slept in some cellar, with a block of ice for a
pillow.
But nothing that I ever saw lasts for ever, or if it does I haven't
lived long enough to prove it. Still, one gets restless in weather like
this, when human beings are dropping down dead in the streets of a city
close by in dozens, from sunstrokes.
This morning I sat in my room, with a short gown and not over many
skirts on, looking through the green slats of my door, and watching the
sunshine shimmer down on the waves where the little white vessels were
folding their sails, and going to sleep like birds too lazy for flying,
when a colored person came to my door, and says he:
"Mr. Burke's compliments, and will Miss Frost take a walk with him on
the beach?"
I started up, and, says I:
"Won't I!" Then I composed myself, and sent back compliments, and Miss
Frost will have great pleasure in complying with Mr. Burke's polite
invitation.
When the--colored messenger was gone, I sat down in the Boston rocker,
clasped my hands, and drew a deep, deep sigh of ecstatic expectation.
Then I remembered that he was waiting, and sprang to my feet.
With my two shaking hands I fastened the other woman's hair over my own,
that would neither curl nor friz worth a cent that awful hot day. Then I
put on a white muslin dress, that looked seraphically innocent, and
tightened it up with a plaid silk sash, that circled my slender waist
and floated off like a rainbow breaking through a cloud.
Then I took my parasol in one hand, held my flowing skirts up with the
other, and went forth to meet my destiny. Oh, how my feet longed to
dance! How my girlish heart beat and fluttered in this innocent bosom.
He was waiting for me in the long stoop, leaning against a post, and
fanning his manly head with the broad brim of his Panama hat. Oh, how
majestic, how--but language fails me here.
Arm in arm we walked along the beach. He leaned toward me, I leaned
with gentle heaviness on him--delightful reciprocity--eloquent silence.
A soft breeze blew up from the ocean, and kissed us both with refreshing
softness.
"Ah!" said the noble man by my side, "this is delicious."
"Deliriously so," I murmured.
"You feel the revivifying effect?" says he.
"Exquisitely," says I, leaning a little more confidingly on his stalwart
arm.
He bent his stately head and looked down into my eyes. Sisters, the
thrill of that glance shook my delicate frame as bumble-bees set a
full-blown rose to trembling when they swarm in its heart.
"Shall we go down to the sands?" says he; "the incoming tide is dashing
them with coolness."
I understood the delicate meaning conveyed in these words. Nothing could
be more exquisitely suggestive. The tide--what was that but his own
noble self? The sands--pure, white, untrodden--in my whole life I never
heard anything more typical.
"If you desire it," I said.
"If I desire it. Ah! Miss Frost, it is for you to say."
My heart leaped to this as a speckled trout snaps at a fly. Nothing so
near a proposal had ever reached me before. But a New England woman is
modest; she does not snatch at the first offer--far from it. I pretended
not to understand the badly hidden meaning of his metaphor. A little art
of this kind is feminine and excusable, even in a young girl dignified
with Society membership and a mission. I felt that he could appreciate
it. He did. Some people were below us on the sands. They paused to look
up as this noble creature handed me down those wooden steps. The effect
must have been artistical. My cloud-like skirts floated softly on the
zephyrs. My scarf streamed out like a banner. I am afraid the curve of
my boot might have been seen from below, for many admiring faces were
turned that way, and Mr. Burke cast his eye downward in a fugitive
manner.
At last we reached the sands, on which both the sun and waves were
beating luminously. By a ridge of white sand he paused.
"Shall we sit here?" says he, with tender questioning.
"Anywhere," says I, with sweet feminine complacency.
Then I dropped down on the sand ridge, and sweeping my skirts together,
cast a timid glance up and around.
That noble man was spreading a silk umbrella. There was a hitch in the
spring, and, such was his eager impatience to occupy the seat I had so
delicately suggested, that a real naughty word broke from his lips--a
word I, as a missionary, never could forgive, if it hadn't been the
proof of such loving impatience. As it was, like a recording angel, I
blotted it out of my memory with a forgiving sigh.
That refractory umbrella was hoisted at last, and its owner placed
himself on the sand beside me, holding it not seaward, but like a tent,
shading us two from the whole world, while the sun took care of itself.
"This," says he, "is a sweet relief. Don't you find it so, Miss Frost?"
I answered him with a sigh, soft, but audible.
"Yes, one can draw a full breath here," says he. "I was sure you would
enjoy it."
"I do, indeed," says I, playing with the sand in the innocence of my
heart.
Evidently embarrassed by deep feeling, he too began to sift the white
sand through his fingers, which came so near mine that they made me
catch my breath for fear he might clasp them. On the contrary, he gave
up the temptatious exercise, and throwing a generous restraint on
himself, began to talk metaphorically and metaphysically about many
things, especially about gathering maple-sap, of which he questioned me
tenderly, veiling the hidden meaning in his heart, by a seeming interest
in our trees.
He asked me, with infinite meaning in his voice, at what period the
sparkling sap began to mount up from the curly roots of our maples, and
vivify the trunk, twigs, and branches of that noble tree.
I understood his meaning, delicately veiled as it was. He wished to
reveal his contempt of young saplings compared to the vigorous tree. It
was a poetic way of comparing young snips of things with whole-souled
girls, who had all the bloom of youth, and all the strength of maturity.
I spoke my mind on the subject. I said that strength, greenness, a
full-grown trunk were necessary before sweet wholesome sap could
circulate from root to top of a sugar maple. That saplings amounted to
just nothing at all. In fact, they kept absorbing, but gave forth
nothing; that a rich maturity was desirable before the maple became
important as a forest-tree or an object of wealth.
I think he understood me--or rather he understood that I, with the
exquisite intuition of genius, understood him. For right off, on that,
he said that he would like to live in Vermont, and own maple-trees
himself; that native sugar was a sweet business, and must have a
softening tendency upon those who entered into it.
He sometimes bought it of little boys in the cars, and always felt a
soothing influence after eating it, that made him long to drink the
native sap fresh from the tree. In fact, he took a deep interest in
Vermont and all its institutions.
While we were talking on these sweet subjects, quite a breeze sprang up
from the water.
Things brighten around us. The sky looked blue. The heaving waves of the
ocean began to swell and sparkle as if a diamond mine were breaking up
in their depths. I am satisfied that Long Branch is all that it has been
cracked up to be--and more too, when kindred souls meet on its sandy
shores.
"How bright! how beautiful!" says he, backing off suddenly from the
maple question, which had covered a world of hidden meaning, and looking
out to sea, with a delicate wish, no doubt, to spare my blushes.
"Some persons have been kind enough to think so," says I, "but it isn't
for me to say."
"I love the fitful changes--the soft transparency: nothing can be more
lovely," says he.
The occasion required downcast eyes and shrinking silence. I gave him
both. There could be no better answer for a speech so personal and yet
so poetic.
"I hope you share my feelings in this."
That moment--that precious, precious moment--was broken in upon in a way
that makes me clench my teeth as I write. Up the sands, racing forward
like a young colt, came "that child," with her flat flying back by the
strings, and a broken parasol in her hand; up she flew toward Mr. Burke.
"Come here," says she, "I want you to whip that boy out there within an
inch of his life. I broke my parasol over his head, but it wasn't half
enough; I want you to give it to him good."
"But what has he done," says Mr. Burke, no doubt riled to the depths of
his noble heart, as I was.
"Done enough, I should think. He mimicked the way I carried my parasol,
and said some folks wanted to be young ladies before they could
read--that's what he has done," says the creature, flaming out like a
bantam.
"Perhaps we had better go in," says Mr. Burke, lifting himself out of
the sand.
"Not till you've given him hail Columbia," says the creature, taking a
new grip on her broken parasol.
"I rather think he has got that," says Mr. Burke, reaching out his hand
to help me up.
I arose. I jerked that Leghorn flat by the strings, and tied it under
the creature's chin with a pull that made her scream. Then I took Mr.
Burke's arm and mounted the wooden steps, with a feeling at my heart
that is not to be described by mortal pen. What a world of bliss that
wicked little wretch broke in upon. His soul was verging towards mine so
beautifully. The final words were burning on his lips when she rushed
in. Still, memory is left, reason is left. I know what was in that
noble heart, and that knowledge is bliss.
I felt this: I knew his meaning. To a common woman he might have said,
"I love you dearly. I wish above all things to spend my life with you;"
but to a creature made up of sensitive pride and poetic niceties,
unclothed proposals of this kind must be quite out of place. Of course I
understood all that, and felt the refinement of his conduct deeply.
What more _could_ a man say than this? In order to be delicately
personal, one must talk by comparisons. To praise the State one is born
in, is to praise one's self. To seize upon any material thing for a
poetical comparison with a human being, is to be intensely complimentary
to that being.
For the first time in my life I feel the sweet certainty of duplication.
My heart swells with the beautiful faith of hope deferred. Those
heavenly lines we have sung so often together in our meeting-house come
back to my mind--
"To patient faith the prize is sure--"
I dare not go farther and complete the rhyme, because human sensation
should not encroach on the divine; but the spirit of that hymn sings in
my heart; for if there is anything on this earth that woman should be
grateful for, it is love.
Yes, my sisters, at last I feel that I am beloved. A ray of sympathetic
feeling has darted from a grand and noble soul to mine, changing that
dull, sandy coast to Elysium.
Last night, when I retired to the secrecy of my chamber, it seemed to me
that if ever a woman's heart--beg pardon, a young girl's heart--was born
again, mine had become more tenderly infantine than it was when I lay
one week old in my loving mother's arms.
The moonlight was streaming through the muslin curtains of my room when
I entered it. It was an ovation of silvery light dawning upon the new
life that opens before me. I do not know how other people feel when the
crisis of fate is on them, but in my heart there is room for nothing but
infinite thankfulness.
Yes, sisters, I think you can conscientiously congratulate me. Virtue
does sometimes meet with its own reward, especially when it is combined
with youthfulness, elegance, and high mental attributes.
XCVI.
C. O. D.
Dear sisters:--The cruelty of one female woman to another is something
awful. As a general thing, E. E. Dempster is a good-natured, amiable
person, but her conduct on the very day after that heavenly season on
the shore was worthy of the Spanish Inquisition. She has lacerated the
heart in my bosom, and torn me away from this place like a ruthless
highwayman. That is what she has done.
Early in the morning, while I was dreaming sweetly of the sea-shore,
that unfeeling female rushed into my room.
"Phœmie," says she, "you can't sleep any longer. We are packing up for
the city. Cecilia has been insulted here, and I won't stay another hour
in the place."
"What! what is it?" says I. "How could you! He was just giving up
metaphor and coming squarely out in the sweetest way."
"You will have no more than time to pack your trunk before the train
starts," says she.
"Starts--what for! where?"
"For New York, and after that to Saratoga; Cecilia insists on it, poor,
sweet darling."
"For New York?" says I.
"On the way to Saratoga."
"But--but who is going. Is--is--?"
"Why, you and I, Dempster, and that sweet, ill-used child. Would you
believe it, that rude boy's father refuses to whip him, and said a girl
that could give a black eye with her parasol was--well, I can't find the
heart to repeat it. At any rate, she doesn't stay another hour under the
same roof with that little fiend."
"But is that all--Oh, tell me is no one else going?" says I feeling as
if a ton of lead had been heaped on me.
"Dear me. There is no one else to care for the poor child. Of course, no
one will take it up but us. So make haste."
Out she went, leaving me just heart-broken and ready to give up. How
could I go? how could I leave him and "the Branch," as if my soul were
fleeing from his?
It was of no use. E. E. was set upon going, and I couldn't help myself.
Well, sisters, two hours after I left that bed we had packed up bag and
baggage, given a cart-load of trunks for the express-men to smash or
carry, just as they liked, and then took a little run of railroad, and a
sail in a steamboat so grand and airy, and no ending, that we began to
feel sorry that James Fisk was dead, or that his splendid ghost didn't
roam along the steamboat track and keep things ship-shape, as he left
them.
Well, in that steamboat we reached New York, warm, restless, and nigh
about ready to give out, or take a friendly sunstroke and be peaceably
carried away to a cool vault in some shady graveyard.
I mentioned this alternative to Cousin Dempster, but he shook his head
and answered that some of us might find ourselves waking up in a more
uncomfortable place than the streets of New York; which I thought
impossible, but said nothing.
Well, we had a few hours to stay in the city before a boat would be
ready to take us to Saratoga Springs--a name that sounded so cool and
refreshing, that I longed to get there and breathe again.
Cousin E. E. said, when we went ashore:
"Phœmie," says she, "there are a few hours before us; suppose we go
a-shopping? I want ever so many things. Saratoga is a dressy place, and
I haven't a thing to wear."
Then, before I could object, says she to Dempster:
"A check, my dear, or if you have the funds on hand."
Dempster gave a sigh that shook his manly bosom through and through, and
says he:
"There," drawing a roll of bank bills from his vest pocket, "will that
do?"
E. E. unrolled the bills and sorted them out.
"Ten, twenty, fifty, ten, ten, ten, fif-- Why, Dempster, what do you
mean? How far will a hundred and fifty dollars go? I want to spend more
than that on Valenciennes lace for Cecilia's dress. The child must have
something to wear."
She spoke in a grieved, half-angry way, that touched Dempster to the
heart. He took out his pocket-book, but not another sign of money was in
it. Then he felt in three or four pockets with the air of a man who was
tormented with doubts of finding anything. At last he stopped looking.
"I haven't another red cent about me, dear. Indeed I haven't."
"Dear me, what am I to do? There is a guipure sacque at Stewart's that I
must have."
"Couldn't you get along without it?" says Dempster, with such pathetic
earnestness that I really felt sorry for him.
"Get along without it! How can you ask?"
"That Brussels lace thing," faltered Dempster.
"What, that? I have had it six months at least; besides, I saw another
just like it at the hotel, and that is enough to disgust one with
anything. If people will pattern after me, I can't help it. Then again
one gets so tired of the same thing."
"But I have no more money."
"Can't you draw a check?"
"My check-book is at the office."
"Always so when I want anything. Now, Dempster, this is too bad."
"Well," says Dempster, desperately, "get the thing, and tell Stewart to
charge it?"
Cousin E. E. turned her face away. It was awful cloudy, and I could see
that she was biting her lips. She had an awful long bill at Stewart's
already. Then her face lighted up.
"Can't I have them sent C. O. D., by express? You will have time to get
plenty of money before then," says she, as soft as silk weed.
"I hate the system," says Dempster; "money in hand is the only way a
lady should make purchases. Then she knows what she is about. Everything
else leads to extravagance. I hate bills as if they were copperheads;
they are things I never will forgive."
I saw that E. E. turned pale, and a red flush came around her eyes as if
she were just ready to burst out a-crying.
Dempster thought it was because he had stood out about the money and
gave in a trifle.
"For this once," says he, "have the things charged, but bring the bill
with you. I must know what I am about in these matters."
"But I mightn't find them all in one place. Hadn't we better make it a
C. O. D., just for once?" says she, pleading for her own way as if her
mouth were full of humble pie.
"Do as you please for this once," says he, half out of patience, "but
remember, I am set against bills and running accounts--pay as you go
along, is my motto."
E. E. drew a deep breath, and, putting the money in a little mite of a
leather satchel fastened to her side by a belt, took up her parasol and
prepared to march off.
Cecilia followed after, surveying her little toadstool of a parasol, and
stooping forward as she walked, like an undersized kangaroo.
I only wish E. E., or even Cousin Dempster, could see that child as I
see her. But they can't. Where she is concerned, they seem born fools,
both of them.
Well, off we went one way, and Dempster the other--he to get the money,
and his wife to spend it. I looked on, and wondered how any man living
could afford to get married. The whole thing made me down-hearted, and
half-ashamed of my relationship with a woman who could worry money out
of her husband like that, and not feel how mean she was--could not my
cousin see that she was poisoning the soul of her own child by an
example which she was just as certain to follow as she was to live.
Well, we got into a carriage and drove up Broadway; but instead of going
to Stewart's great marble building, E. E. stopped at some other places,
and kept buying and buying till I got tired out, and sat on a round
stool by the counter, saying nothing, but thinking a good deal. Each
place we left, I heard her say, "Grand Union Hotel, Saratoga: C. O. D.,"
till I got tired to death of the word.
At one place my cousin and that child had a grand set-to in the store.
Cecilia wanted a bright-red silk dress to wear under her lace one; but
E. E. liked blue best, and ordered it. Then Cecilia declared she didn't
want any dress at all, broke her new parasol striking it against the
counter, and ended off by flinging herself down on a stool and drumming
her feet against the counter--so mad that she cried till everybody in
the store heard her.
Of course E. E. gave in, just to pacify her, while I would have given
fifty of the brightest silver dollars ever issued by the U. S.
Government, for the happiness of giving her the neatest little trouncing
she ever got in her life. But luxuries like these, I can hardly expect
just yet. How that cousin of mine can give up a parental prerogative so
tempting to the hands I cannot imagine. I really would not put so much
pleasure off an hour.
XCVII.
TAKEN IN.
Well, after trapesing about from one store to another till I was nigh
about tired to death, E. E. concluded that she had got through her
shopping, except a few things that we could carry in our pockets, which
kept us rushing in and out of every little shop we came to for an hour
longer. Then she said we would stop into Purssell's and get something to
eat, for she was beginning to feel hungry. This had been the case with
me ever so long; not that I hankered much in hot weather for hearty
food, but I felt a sort of faintness; and when she said something about
Purssell's having delicious peaches, I knew that they were exactly the
thing which would appease all the internal longing of my nature.
But just as my mouth was beginning to water, E. E. took out her watch
and gave a little scream.
"Why," says she, "who would a-thought it? We have but just fifteen
minutes to reach the boat in?"
My heart sank. The taste of those peaches had almost got into my mouth,
but now a taste of dust came in their place. I could just have sat down
and cried.
"Never mind," says E. E.; "we can get dinner on board."
"Dinner on board!" Thin soup; hot meat down in the bottom of a
steamboat, with a smell of oil, sour water, and musty linen all around
you--that is what "a dinner on board" means, and nothing else. The very
thought made me feel rily about the temper--all that I wanted was some
peaches.
You will not wonder, sisters, that I hankered after this delicious
fruit, which is about the only good thing that grows which we do not
have in the old Vermont State. Only think of them--round, plump, juicy;
with the redness of a warm sunset burning on one side, and pale-gold
glowing on the other; cool, delicious, melting away in the mouth with a
flavor that just makes you want to kiss some smiling baby while it is
on your lips! Think of them! then imagine my feelings when I was hurried
into a hack, and rattled off to the steamboat with the promise of a hot
dinner in its internal regions. We saw peaches on every hand as we drove
along--in stores, on street tables, in baskets carried by Irish women,
who looked up at the carriage-window pleadingly as we drove along.
"Wait one minute," says I, as a woman came up with her long basket
brimming over with the luscious fruit; "I must have some peaches."
"Not a second," says E. E.; "don't you see Dempster beckoning from the
deck? The last bell is ringing. Come, come!"
The Irish woman lifted up her basket, and stood there enticing me. E. E.
rushed up the plank, calling out: "Make haste, make haste!"
Cecilia sung out: "Come along, Phœmie!"
Two men had hold of the plank bridge. I had to cross then, or be left
behind. I cast one yearning look towards the basket, rushed up the
plank, and stood panting, by the side of Dempster.
"Oh dear, it is too bad!" says I.
"What is it, Phœmie?" says Dempster.
"Peaches!" says I. "Those delicious peaches--see how they glow in the
sunshine!"
"Oh, nonsense! There is plenty on board," says he; "I'll go and get
some."
"Not yet," says E. E.; "the deck is so crowded."
Dempster got seats for us and a stool for himself. The crowd was packed
so close that one could hardly breathe. I was thirsty, I was tired out,
and just ready to cry. E. E. was tired also, and a little cross. Cecilia
was just as she always is--a nuisance. I felt like thanking Dempster
when he jumped up, and says he:
"Now for the peaches!"
Away he went, just as good-natured as could be, calling back for me to
keep his seat for him. I laid my parasol on it, and kept my hand on
that; but a minute after came a great heathen of a fellow and attempted
to take the stool.
"It is engaged," says I, pressing down my hand.
"What of that?" says he, jerking the stool away, and throwing my parasol
on to the floor. "Every one for himself, and no favors."
I was blue as indigo before that. At another time this creature would
have riled me into a tempest, but now I felt more like crying. But there
he sat, plump on the stool, looking as self-contented as if butter would
not melt in his mouth.
Dempster came back. I looked up longingly. His hands were empty.
"I am very sorry," says he, "but there isn't a peach on board."
Well, there I sat, with the sun pouring down on me, while E. E. read the
illustrated papers, and that child made herself generally numerous among
the passengers. After awhile I got up to look over the side of the
vessel, when that horrid wretch snatched up my seat and carried it off,
looking back at me and laughing.
I said nothing--what was the use?--but leaned against the cabin-door,
holding my satchel, the most forlorn creature you ever saw. Just then
some one spoke to me. I looked round. It was a roly-poly, oldish woman,
who spread considerably over her chair, and held a travelling-basket on
her lap. She had found an empty stool, and asked me to take it.
I sat down while she smiled blandly upon me.
"Never mind that fellow," says she. "Some men are born animals of one
kind or another, so let them go."
Her words were kind--her manner motherly. I liked the woman. She is not
elegant, I thought, but who could be with all that breadth of chest and
brevity of limb? I smiled and thanked her, wondering who she was.
"Pretty scenery," says she, pointing to the bank on which some
cottage-houses, and a wooden tavern with red maroon half-curtains at the
window, seemed to set the whole neighborhood on fire. "Now I would give
anything for a house like that. Snug, isn't it?"
She might have been looking at the wooden tavern, or at a cottage close
by with a beautiful drapery of vines running along the porch. "Of
course," thought I, "she means that."
"Yes," says I, "it looks delightfully quiet."
She nodded, and opened her basket, a capacious affair, quite large
enough to hold half a peck of peaches. My mouth began to water.
Perhaps--
"Take one," says she, handing over a cracker.
I took the disappointment, and tried to eat, but with that hankering
after peaches in my throat it seemed like refreshing one's self on
sawdust. She noticed this, I think, and, with a little hesitation,
looked into her basket again, then closed it, and, looking towards me,
whispered--
"That's dry eating. Come down to the cabin, and I'll give you something
nice."
"Something nice!" I felt my eyes brighten. "Something nice--peaches, of
course. What else could she have but peaches?" I thanked her with
enthusiasm; my eyes gloated on her basket. Peaches and plenty of
them--delicious!
The stranger arose, smoothed down her dress, and led the way downstairs.
Her presence was imposing, her step firm as a rock. Assuredly my new
acquaintance was no common person--a little stout, certainly, but so is
the Queen of England.
I followed her eagerly, thinking of the peaches, longing for them with
inexpressible longing. We went through the cabin--on and on--back of
some curtains that draped it at one end. Here she paused, set her basket
on a marble table, and proceeded to open it.
I did not wish to show the craving eagerness which possessed me, and
delicately turned my eyes away. Then she spoke in a deep mellow voice,
as though she had fed on peaches from the cradle up.
"Look a-here," says she. "Isn't this something nice?"
I looked! the basket was open. She held a tumbler in one hand and a
bottle in the other, from which a stream of brandy gurgled. That rotund
impostor came toward me, beaming.
"There," says she, "take right hold. It's first-rate Cognac."
All the Vermont blood in my veins riled suddenly. I drew myself up to
the full queenly height that so many people have thought imposing.
Disappointment sharpened virtue's indignation.
"Madam," says I, "you have practised a hospitable fraud--in Christian
charity I will call it hospitable--on a New England lady, who looks upon
temperance as a cardinal virtue. Put up your bottle. Maple sap and sweet
cider from straws are the strongest drinks I ever indulge in."
"Maple sap," says she, with a rumbling, mellow laugh, which ended in a
cough as the brandy went down her throat. "Sweet cider, through straws!
Well, every one to her taste."
Here she filled the glass again and held it out, smiling like a harvest
moon.
"What, you won't take the least nip, just to save it, you know?"
I turned my back upon that rotund tempter, and walked with a stately
step to the deck, followed by a rich gurgle from the second glass as it
went down that perfidious creature's throat.
"Goodness gracious! What a surprise!"
This was my exclamation when I saw Mr. Burke coming towards me, across
the deck, with a small basketful of the most delicious peaches in his
hand.
There he came, smiling so blandly, and held out the basket for me to
help myself. He was going to Saratoga, he said. The hot season had
driven him to seek mountainous air. O sisters!
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Phemie Frost's Experiences, by Ann S. Stephens