THE TWINS HAVE A PROPOSAL
It was half past three on a delightful summer afternoon. The twins stood
at the gate with two hatless youths, performing what seemed to be the
serious operation of separating their various tennis racquets and shoes
from the conglomerate jumble. Finally, laughing and calling back over
their shoulders, they sauntered lazily up the walk toward the house, and
the young men set off in the direction from which they had come. They
were hardly out of hearing distance when the front door opened, and Aunt
Grace beckoned hurriedly to the twins.
"Come on, quick," she said. "Where in the world have you been all day?
Did you have any luncheon? Mrs. Forrest and Jim were here, and they
invited you to go home with them for a week in the country. I said I
knew you'd want to go, and they promised to come for you at four, but I
couldn't find you any place. I suppose it is too late now. It's--"
"A week!"
"At Forrests'?"
"Come on, Lark, sure we have time enough. We'll be ready in fifteen
minutes."
"Come on up, auntie, we'll tell you where we've been."
The twins flew up the stairs, their aunt as close behind as she deemed
safe. Inside their own room they promptly, and ungracefully, kicked off
their loose pumps, tossed their tennis shoes and racquets on the bed,
and began tugging at the cords of their middy blouses.
"You go and wash, Carol," said Lark, "while I comb. Then I can have the
bathroom to myself. And hurry up! You haven't any time to primp."
"Pack the suit-case and the bag, will you, auntie, and--"
"I already have," she answered, laughing at their frantic energy. "And I
put out these white dresses for you to wear, and--"
"Gracious, auntie! They button in the back and have sixty buttons
apiece. We'll never have time to fasten them," expostulated Carol,
without diminishing her speed.
"I'll button while you powder, that'll be time enough."
"I won't have time to powder," called back Carol from the bathroom,
where she was splashing the water at a reckless rate. "I'll wear a veil
and powder when I get there. Did you pack any clean handkerchiefs,
auntie? I'm clear out. If you didn't put any in, you'd better go and
borrow Connie's. Lucky thing she's not here."
Shining with zeal and soap, Carol dashed out, and Lark dashed in.
"Are there any holes in these stockings?" Carol turned around, lifting
her skirts for inspection. "Well, I'm sorry, I won't have time to change
them.--Did they come in the auto? Good!" She was brushing her hair as
she talked. "Yes, we had a luncheon, all pie, though. We played tennis
this morning; we were intending to come home right along, or we'd have
phoned you. We were playing with George Castle and Fritzie Zale.--Is it
sticking out any place?" She lowered her head backward for her aunt to
see. "Stick a pin in it, will you? Thanks. They dared us to go to the
pie counter and see which couple could eat the most pieces of lemon pie,
the couple which lost paying for all the pie. It's not like betting, you
know, it's a kind of reward of merit, like a Sunday-school prize. No, I
won't put on my slippers till the last thing, my heel's sore, my tennis
shoe rubbed the skin off. My feet seem to be getting tender. Think it's
old age?"
Lark now emerged from the bathroom, and both twins performed a flying
exchange of dresses.
"Who won?"
"Lark and George ate eleven pieces, and Fritzie and I only nine. So
Fritzie paid. Then we went on the campus and played mumble-te-peg, or
whatever you call it. It is French, auntie."
"Did they ask us to stay a whole week, auntie?" inquired Lark.
"Yes. Jim was wearing his new gray suit and looked very nice. I've never
been out to their home. Is it very nice?"
"Um, swell!" This was from Carol, Lark being less slangily inclined.
"They have about sixteen rooms, and two maids--they call them
'girls'--and electric lights, and a private water supply,
and--and--horses, and cows--oh, it's great! We've always been awfully
fond of Jim. The nicest thing about him is that he always takes a girl
home when he goes to class things and socials. I can't endure a fellow
who walks home by himself. Jim always asks Larkie and me first, and if
we are taken he gets some one else. Most boys, if they can't get first
choice, pike off alone."
"Here, Carol, you have my petticoat. This is yours. You broke the
drawstring, and forgot--"
"Oh, mercy, so I did. Here, auntie, pin it over for me, will you? I'll
take the string along and put it in to-night."
"Now, Carol," said Aunt Grace, smiling. "Be easy on him. He's so nice it
would be a shame to--"
Carol threw up her eyes in horror. "I am shocked," she cried. Then she
dimpled. "But I wouldn't hurt Jim for anything. I'm very fond of him. Do
you really think there are any--er--indications--"
"Oh, I don't know anything about it. I'm just judging by the rest of the
community."
Lark was performing the really difficult feat of putting on and
buttoning her slippers standing on one foot for the purpose and stooping
low. Her face was flushed from the exertion.
"Do you think he's crazy about you, Carol?" she inquired, rather
seriously, and without looking up from the shoe she was so laboriously
buttoning.
"Oh, I don't know. There are a few circumstances which seem to point
that way. Take that new gray suit for instance. Now you know yourself,
Lark, he didn't need a new gray suit, and when a man gets a brand-new
suit for no apparent reason, you can generally put it down that he's
waxing romantic. Then there's his mother--she's begun telling me all his
good points, and how cute he was when he was born, and she showed me one
of his curls and a lot of his baby pictures--it made Jim wild when he
came in and caught her at it, and she tells me how good he is and how
much money he's got. That's pointed, very. But I must confess," she
concluded candidly, "that Jim himself doesn't act very loverly."
"He thinks lots of you, I know," said Lark, still seriously. "Whenever
he's alone with me he praises you every minute of the time."
"That's nothing. When he's alone with me he praises you all the time,
too. Where's my hat, Lark? I'll bet Connie wore it, the little sinner!
Now what shall I do?"
"You left it in the barn yesterday,--don't you remember you hung it on
the harness hook when we went out for eggs, and--"
"Oh, so I did. There comes Connie now." Carol thrust her head out of the
window. "Connie, run out to the barn and bring my hat, will you? It's on
the harness hook. And hurry! Don't stop to ask questions, just trot
along and do as you're told."
Carol returned again to her toilet. "Well, I guess I have time to powder
after all. I don't suppose we'll need to take any money, auntie, do you?
We won't be able to spend it in the country."
"I think you'd better take a little. They might drive to town, or go to
a social, or something."
"Can't do it. Haven't a cent."
"Well, I guess I can lend you a little," was the smiling reply. It was
a standing joke in the family that Carol had been financially hard
pressed ever since she began using powder several years previous.
"Are you fond of Jim, Carol?" Lark jumped away backward in the
conversation, asking the question gravely, her eyes upon her sister's
face.
"Hum! Yes, I am," was the light retort. "Didn't Prudence teach us to
love everybody?"
"Don't be silly. I mean if he proposes to you, are you going to turn him
down, or not?"
"What would you advise, Lark?" Carol's brows were painfully knitted.
"He's got five hundred acres of land, worth at least a hundred an acre,
and a lot of money in the bank,--his mother didn't say how much, but I
imagine several thousand anyhow. And he has that nice big house, and an
auto, and--oh, everything nice! Think of the fruit trees, Larkie! And
he's good-looking, too. And his mother says he is always good natured
even before breakfast, and that's very exceptional, you know! Very! I
don't know that I could do much better, do you, auntie? I'm sure I'd
look cute in a sun-bonnet and apron, milking the cows! So, boss, so,
there, now! So, boss!"
"Why, Carol!"
"But there are objections, too. They have pigs. I can't bear pigs!
Pooooey, pooooey! The filthy little things! I don't know,--Jim and the
gray suit and the auto and the cows are very nice, but when I think of
Jim and overalls and pigs and onions and freckles I have goose flesh.
Here they come! Where's that other slipper? Oh, it's clear under the
bed!" She wriggled after it, coming out again breathless. "Did I rub the
powder all off?" she asked anxiously.
The low honk of the car sounded outside, and the twins dumped a
miscellaneous assortment of toilet articles into the battered suit-case
and the tattered hand-bag. Carol grabbed her hat from Connie, leisurely
strolling through the hall with it, and sent her flying after her
gloves. "If you can't find mine, bring your own," she called after her.
Aunt Grace and Connie escorted them triumphantly down the walk to the
waiting car where the young man in the new sentimental gray suit stood
beside the open door. His face was boyishly eager, and his eyes were
full of a satisfaction that had a sort of excitement in it, too. Aunt
Grace looked at him and sighed. "Poor boy," she thought. "He is nice!
Carol is a mean little thing!"
He smiled at the twins impartially. "Shall we flip a coin to see who I
get in front?" he asked them, laughing.
His mother leaned out from the back seat, and smiled at the girls very
cordially. "Hurry, twinnies," she said, "we must start, or we'll be late
for supper. Come in with me, won't you, Larkie?"
"What a greasy schemer she is," thought Carol, climbing into her place
without delay.
Jim placed the battered suit-case and the tattered bag beneath the seat,
and drew the rug over his mother's knees. Then he went to Lark's side,
and tucked it carefully about her feet.
"It's awfully dusty," he said. "You shouldn't have dolled up so. Shall I
put your purse in my pocket? Don't forget you promised to feed the
chickens--I'm counting on you to do it for me."
Then he stepped in beside Carol, laughing into her bright face, and the
good-bys rang back and forth as the car rolled away beneath the heavy
arch of oak leaves that roofed in Maple Avenue.
The twins fairly reveled in the glories of the country through the
golden days that followed, and enjoyed every minute of every day, and
begrudged the hours they spent in sleep. The time slipped by "like
banana skins," declared Carol crossly, and refused to explain her
comparison. And the last day of their visit came. Supper was over at
seven o'clock, and Lark said, with something of wistfulness in her
voice, "I'm going out to the orchard for a farewell weep all by myself.
And don't any of you disturb me,--I'm so ugly when I cry."
So she set out alone, and Jim, a little awkwardly, suggested that Carol
take a turn or so up and down the lane with him. Mrs. Forrest stood at
the window and watched them, tearful-eyed, but with tenderness.
"My little boy," she said to herself, "my little boy. But she's a dear,
sweet, pretty girl."
In the meantime, Jim was acquitting himself badly. His face was pale. He
was nervous, ill at ease. He stammered when he spoke. Self-consciousness
was not habitual to this young man of the Iowa farm. He was not the
awkward, ignorant, gangling farm-hand we meet in books and see on
stages. He had attended the high school in Mount Mark, and had been
graduated from the state agricultural college with high honors. He was a
farmer, as his father had been before him, but he was a farmer of the
new era, one of those men who takes plain farming and makes it a
profession, almost a fine art. Usually he was self-possessed, assertive,
confident, but, in the presence of this sparkling twin, for once he was
abashed.
Carol was in an ecstasy of delight. She was not a man-eater, perhaps,
but she was nearly romance-mad. She thought only of the wild excitement
of having a sure-enough lover, the hurt of it was yet a little beyond
her grasp. "Oh, Carol, don't be so sweet," Lark had begged her once.
"How can the boys help being crazy about you, and it hurts them." "It
doesn't hurt anything but their pride when they get snubbed," had been
the laughing answer. "Do you want to break men's hearts?" "Well,--it's
not at all bad for a man to have a broken heart," the irrepressible
Carol had insisted. "They never amount to anything until they have a
real good disappointment. Then they brace up and amount to something.
See? I really think it's a kindness to give them a heart-break, and get
them started."
The callow youths of Mount Mark, of the Epworth League, and the college,
were almost unanimous in laying their adoration at Carol's feet. But
Carol saw the elasticity, the buoyancy, of loves like these, and she
couldn't really count them. She felt that she was ripe for a bit of
solid experience now, and there was nothing callow about Jim--he was
solid enough. And now, although she could see that his feelings stirred,
she felt nothing but excitement and curiosity. A proposal, a real one!
It was imminent, she felt it.
"Carol," he began abruptly, "I am in love."
"A-are you?" Carol had not expected him to begin in just that way.
"Yes,--I have been for a long time, with the sweetest and dearest girl
in the world. I know I am not half good enough for her, but--I love her
so much that--I believe I could make her happy."
"D-do you?" Carol was frightened. She reflected that it wasn't so much
fun as she had expected. There was something wonderful in his eyes, and
in his voice. Maybe Lark was right,--maybe it did hurt! Oh, she really
shouldn't have been quite so nice to him!
"She is young--so am I--but I know what I want, and if I can only have
her, I'll do anything I--" His voice broke a little. He looked very
handsome, very grown-up, very manly. Carol quivered. She wanted to run
away and cry. She wanted to put her arms around him and tell him she was
very, very sorry and she would never do it again as long as she lived
and breathed.
"Of course," he went on, "I am not a fool. I know there isn't a girl
like her in ten thousand, but--she's the one I want, and--Carol, do you
reckon there is any chance for me? You ought to know. Lark doesn't have
secrets from you, does she? Do you think she'll have me?"
Certainly this was the surprise of Carol's life. If it was romance she
wanted, here it was in plenty. She stopped short in the daisy-bright
lane and stared at him.
"Jim Forrest," she demanded, "is it Lark you want to marry, or me?"
"Lark, of course!"
Carol opened her lips and closed them. She did it again. Finally she
spoke. "Well, of all the idiots! If you want to marry Lark, what in the
world are you out here proposing to me for?"
"I'm not proposing to you," he objected. "I'm just telling you about
it."
"But what for? What's the object? Why don't you go and rave to her?"
He smiled a little. "Well, I guess I thought telling you first was one
way of breaking it to her gently."
"I'm perfectly disgusted with you," Carol went on, "perfectly. Here I've
been expecting you to propose to me all week, and--"
"Propose to you! My stars!"
"Don't interrupt me," Carol snapped. "Last night I lay awake for
hours,--look at the rings beneath my eyes--"
"I don't see 'em," he interrupted again, smiling more broadly.
"Just thinking out a good flowery rejection for you, and then you trot
me out here and propose to Lark! Well, if that isn't nerve!"
Jim laughed loudly at this. He was used to Carol, and enjoyed her
little outbursts. "I can't think what on earth made you imagine I'd want
to propose to you," he said, shaking his head as though appalled at the
idea.
Carol's eyes twinkled at that, but she did not permit him to see it.
"Why shouldn't I think so? Didn't you get a new gray suit? And haven't I
the best complexion in Mount Mark? Don't all the men want to propose to
a complexion like mine?"
"Shows their bum taste," he muttered.
Carol twinkled again. "Of course," she agreed, "all men have bum taste,
if it comes to that."
He laughed again, then he sobered. "Do you think Lark will--"
"I think Lark will turn you down," said Carol promptly, "and I hope she
does. You aren't good enough for her. No one in the world is good enough
for Lark except myself. If she should accept you--I don't think she
will, but if she has a mental aberration and does--I'll give you my
blessing, and come and live with you six months in the year, and Lark
shall come and live with me the other six months, and you can run the
farm and send us an allowance. But I don't think she'll have you; I'll
be disappointed in her if she does."
Carol was silent a moment then. She was remembering many things,--Lark's
grave face that day in the parsonage when they had discussed the love of
Jim, her unwonted gentleness and her quiet manners during this visit,
and one night when Carol, suddenly awakening, had found her weeping
bitterly into her pillow. Lark had said it was a headache, and was
better now, and Carol had gone to sleep again, but she remembered now
that Lark never had headaches! And she remembered how very often lately
Lark had put her arms around her shoulders and looked searchingly into
her face, and Lark was always wistful, too, of late! She sighed. Yes,
she caught on at last, "had been pushed on to it," she thought angrily.
She had been a wicked, blind, hateful little simpleton or she would have
seen it long ago. But she said nothing of this to Jim.
"You'd better run along then, and switch your proposal over to her, or
I'm likely to accept you on my own account, just for a joke. And be
sure and tell her I'm good and sore that I didn't get a chance to use
my flowery rejection. But I'm almost sure she'll turn you down."
Then Carol stood in the path, and watched Jim as he leaped lightly over
fences and ran through the sweet meadow. She saw Lark spring to her feet
and step out from the shade of an apple tree, and then Jim took her in
his arms.
After that, Carol rushed into the house and up the stairs. She flung
herself on her knees beside her bed and buried her face in the white
spread.
"Lark," she whispered, "Lark!" She clenched her hands, and her shoulders
shook. "My little twin," she cried again, "my nice old Lark." Then she
got up and walked back and forth across the floor. Sometimes she shook
her fist. Sometimes a little crooked smile softened her lips. Once she
stamped her foot, and then laughed at herself. For an hour she paced up
and down. Then she turned on the light, and went to the mirror, where
she smoothed her hair and powdered her face as carefully as ever.
"It's a good joke on me," she said, smiling, "but it's just as good a
one on Mrs. Forrest. I think I'll go and have a laugh at her. And I'll
pretend I knew it all along."
She found the woman lying in a hammock on the broad piazza where a broad
shaft of light from the open door fell upon her. Carol stood beside her,
smiling brightly.
"Mrs. Forrest," she said, "I know a perfectly delicious secret. Shall I
tell you?"
The woman sat up, holding out her arms. Carol dropped on her knees
beside her, smiling mischievously at the expression on her face.
"Cupid has been at work," she said softly, "and your own son has fallen
a victim."
Mrs. Forrest sniffed slightly, but she looked lovingly at the fair sweet
face. "I am sure I can not wonder," she answered in a gentle voice. "Is
it all settled?"
"I suppose so. At any rate, he is proposing to her in the orchard, and I
am pretty sure she's going to accept him."
Mrs. Forrest's arms fell away from Carol's shoulders. "Lark!" she
ejaculated.
"Yes,--didn't you know it?" Carol's voice was mildly and innocently
surprised.
"Lark!" Mrs. Forrest was plainly dumfounded. "I--I thought it was you!"
"Me!" Carol was intensely astonished. "Me? Oh, dear Mrs. Forrest,
whatever in the world made you think that?"
"Why--I don't know," she faltered weakly, "I just naturally supposed it
was you. I asked him once where he left his heart, and he said, 'At the
parsonage,' and so of course I thought it was you."
Carol laughed gaily. "What a joke," she cried. "But you are more
fortunate than you expected, for it is my precious old Larkie. But don't
be too glad about it, or you may hurt my feelings."
"Well, I am surprised, I confess, but I believe I like Lark as well as I
do you, and of course Jim's the one to decide. People say Lark is more
sensible than you are, but it takes a good bit of a man to get beyond a
face as pretty as yours. I'm kind o' proud of Jim!"