I
|AN Indian summer day, idle and tender, lay over hills and woods,
meadows, river. The quaint little Old Town of Oldbridge, set among apple
orchards and gardens and avenues of elms, received this last Benediction
of Nature with an agreeable _ouf!_ of respite from imminent grim winter
approaches.
It is difficult to account, by any utilitarian motive on the part of our
“brown and green old Mother Earth,” for her November caprice of a New
England Indian summer, though I make no doubt the scientists will have
some prosaic reason to give which we are asked to take upon faith. But
since fruit, in New England, is garnered in September, and the toughest
plants are burned to a crimson glory by October frosts, no ripened fruit
or renewal of leaves defend the vagary. And so--will-he nill-he, we
praise Heaven which made our “bounteous mother” feminine forsooth; we
gratefully credit the enchanted fortnight to her bountiful illogical
womanhood.
The Old Town of Oldbridge, then, basking under the Indian summer's
morning blandishment while it sipped its mocha and partook of
grape-fruit towards eight of the clock, pushed an agreeable
_ouf!_--awake to agreeable titillations of excitement. General Adgate's
niece, lovely and rich, admirable combination--Miss Adgate (Ruth Adgate,
they already called her, didn't she belong to them?) had arrived. The
event, discreetly mentioned in the Oldbridge _Morning Herald_, stared
them in the face. Some boasted a glimpse of her, the day before, seated
in the brougham beside her uncle; a pretty girl with reddish brown hair.
Others had seen of her nothing but her outward manifestations on the
luggage cart--two big brass-bound cork trunks, a cabin trunk, precisely
similar, a square hat-box, a dressing case and a dark-eyed Italian maid.
The man of all work, Jo, brought this luggage into the house, with
the gardener's assistance, and up to Ruth's rooms. Now he wiped the
perspiration from his face. Arms akimbo, brows warped in puzzled frown,
he glared at the encumbrances.
“Well, I be durned!” he burst forth. “Glad I ain't got any of them
things to carry round when I go a travelling. One carpet bag's big
enough for me, when I visit my folks, to Falls Junction.”
“Lucky you're glad,” Martha, the efficient, the tart, the very tart
housemaiden snapped, and put him instantly in his place. “Not likely
soon, we'll catch you towering it with a valet and trunks.”