The shrill treble of a girl's voice, raised to its highest pitch in
anger and remonstrance, broke in upon the scholarly meditations of the
teacher of the Ridgemont grammar school. He raised his head from his
book to listen. It came again, mingled with boyish cries and jeers, and
the sound of blows and scuffling. The teacher, a small, fagged-looking
man of middle age, rose hastily, and went out of the school-house.
Both grammar and high school had just been dismissed, and the
bare-trodden play-ground was filled with the departing scholars. In the
centre of the ground a group of boys had collected, and from this group
the discordant sounds still proceeded.
"What is the meaning of this disturbance?" the master asked, coming
near.
At the sound of his voice the group fell apart, disclosing, as a
central point, the figure of a girl of thirteen or fourteen years.
She was thin and straight, and her face, now ablaze with anger
and excitement, was a singular one, full of contradictions, yet
not inharmonious as a whole. It was fair, but not as blondes are
fair, and its creamy surface was flecked upon the cheeks with dark,
velvety freckles. Her features were symmetrical, yet a trifle heavy,
particularly the lips, and certain dusky tints were noticeable about
the large gray eyes and delicate temples, as well as a peculiar crisp
ripple in the mass of vivid red hair which fell from under her torn
straw hat.
Clinging to her scant skirts was a small hunch-backed boy, crying
dismally, and making the most of his tears by rubbing them into his
sickly face with a pair of grimy fists.
The teacher looked about him with disapproval in his glance. The group
contained, no doubt, its fair proportion of future legislators and
presidents, but the raw material was neither encouraging nor pleasant
to look upon. The culprits returned his wavering gaze, some looking a
little conscience-smitten, others boldly impertinent, others still (and
those the worst in the lot) with a charming air of innocence and candor.
"What is it?" the master repeated. "What is the matter?"
"They were plaguing Bobby, here," the girl broke in,
breathlessly,--"taking his marbles away, and making him cry--the mean,
cruel things!"
"Hush!" said the teacher, with a feeble gesture of authority. "Is that
so, boys?"
The boys grinned at each other furtively, but made no answer.
"Boys," he remarked, solemnly, "I--I'm ashamed of you!"
The delinquents not appearing crushed by this announcement, he turned
again to the girl.
"Girls should not quarrel and fight, my dear. It isn't proper, you
know."
A mocking smile sprang to the girl's lips, and a sharp glance shot from
under her black, up-curling lashes, but she did not speak.
"She's allers a-fightin'," ventured one of the urchins, emboldened by
the teacher's reproof; at which the girl turned upon him so fiercely
that he shrank hastily out of sight behind his nearest companion.
"You are not one of _my_ scholars?" the master asked, keeping his mild
eyes upon the scornful face and defiant little figure.
"No!" the girl answered. "I go to the high school!"
"You are small to be in the high school," he said, smiling upon her
kindly.
"It don't go by sizes!" said the child promptly.
"No; certainly not, certainly not," said the teacher, a little
staggered. "What is your name, child?"
"Lilly, sir; Lilly O'Connell," she answered, indifferently.
"Lilly!" the teacher repeated abstractedly, looking into the dusky
face, with its flashing eyes and fallen ruddy tresses,--"Lilly!"
"It _ought_ to have been _Tiger_-Lily!" said a pert voice. "It would
suit her, I'm sure, more ways than one!" and the speaker, a pretty,
handsomely-dressed blonde girl of about her own age, laughed, and
looked about for appreciation of her cleverness.
"So it would!" cried a boyish voice. "Her red hair, and freckles, and
temper! Tiger-Lily! That's a good one!"
A shout of laughter, and loud cries of "Tiger-Lily!" immediately arose,
mingled with another epithet more galling still, in the midst of which
the master's deprecating words were utterly lost.
A dark red surged into the girl's face. She turned one eloquent look of
wrath upon her tormentors, another, intensified, upon the pretty child
who had spoken, and walked away from the place, leading the cripple by
the hand.
"Oh, come now, Flossie," said a handsome boy, who stood near the blonde
girl, "I wouldn't tease her. _She_ can't help it, you know."
"Pity she couldn't know who is taking up for her!" she retorted,
tossing the yellow braid which hung below her waist, and sauntering
away homeward.
"Oh, pshaw!" the boy said, coloring to the roots of his hair; "that's
the way with you girls. You know what I mean. She can't help it that
her mother was a--a mulatto, or something, and her hair red. It's mean
to tease her."
"She can help quarrelling and fighting with the boys, though," said
Miss Flossie, looking unutterable scorn.
"She wouldn't do it, I guess, if they'd let her alone," the young
fellow answered, stoutly. "It's enough to make anybody feel savage to
be badgered, and called names, and laughed at all the time. It makes me
mad to see it. Besides, it isn't always for herself she quarrels. It's
often enough for some little fellow like Bobby, that the big fellows
are abusing. She is good-hearted, anyhow."
They had reached by this time the gate opening upon the lawn which
surrounded the residence of Flossie's mother, the widow Fairfield.
It was a small, but ornate dwelling, expressive, at every point, of
gentility and modern improvements. The lawn itself was well kept,
and adorned with flower-beds and a tiny fountain. Mrs. Fairfield, a
youthful matron in rich mourning of the second stage, sat in a wicker
chair upon the veranda reading, and fanning herself with an air of
elegant leisure.
Miss Flossie paused. She did not want to quarrel with her boyish
admirer, and, with the true instinct of coquetry, instantly appeared
to have forgotten her previous irritation.
"Won't you come in, Roger?" she said, sweetly. "Our strawberries are
ripe."
The boy smiled at the tempting suggestion, but shook his head.
"Can't," he answered, briefly. "I've got a lot of Latin to do. Good-by."
He nodded pleasantly and went his way. It lay through the village and
along the fields and gardens beyond. Just as he came in sight of his
home,--a square, elm-shaded mansion of red brick, standing on a gentle
rise a little farther on,--he paused at a place where a shallow brook
came creeping through the lush grass of the meadow which bounded his
father's possessions. He listened a moment to its low gurgling, so
suggestive of wood rambles and speckled trout, then tossed his strap of
books into the meadow, leaped after it, and followed the brook's course
for a little distance, stooping and peering with his keen brown eyes
into each dusky pool.
All at once, as he looked and listened, another sound than the brook's
plashing came to his ears, and he started up and turned his head. A
stump fence, black and bristling, divided the meadow from the adjoining
field, its uncouth projections draped in tender, clinging vines, and
he stepped softly toward it and looked across. It was a rocky field,
where a thin crop of grass was trying to hold its own against a vast
growth of weeds, and was getting the worst of it,--a barren, shiftless
field, fitly matching the big shiftless barn and small shiftless house
to which it appertained.
Lying prone among the daisies was Lilly O'Connell, her face buried in
her apron, the red rippling mane falling about her, her slender form
shaking with deep and unrestrained sobs.
Roger looked on a moment and then leaped the fence. The girl rose
instantly to a sitting position, and glared defiance at him from a pair
of tear-stained eyes.
"What are you crying about?" he asked, with awkward kindness.
Her face softened, and a fresh sob shook her.
"Oh, come!" said Roger; "don't mind what a lot of sneaks say."
The girl looked up quickly into the honest dark eyes.
"It was Florence Fairfield that said it," she returned, speaking very
rapidly.
Roger gave an uneasy laugh.
"Oh! you mean that about the 'Tiger-Lily'?"
"Yes," she answered, "and it's true. It's true as can be. See!" And for
the first time the boy noticed that her gingham apron was filled with
the fiery blossoms of the tiger-lily.
"See!" she said again, with an unchildish laugh, holding the flowers
against her face.
Roger was not an imaginative boy, but he could not help feeling
the subtle likeness between the fervid blossoms, strange, tropical
outgrowth of arid New England soil, and this passionate child of
mingled races, with her ruddy hair, and glowing eyes and lips. For a
moment he did not know what to say, but at last, in his simple, boyish
way he said:
"Well, what of it? I think they're splendid."
The girl looked up incredulously.
"I wouldn't mind the--the _hair_!" he stammered. "I've got a cousin up
to Boston, and she's a great belle--a beauty, you know. All the artists
are crazy to paint her picture, and her hair is just the color of
yours."
Lilly laid the flowers down. Her eyes fell.
"You don't understand," she said, slowly. "Other girls have red hair.
It isn't that."
Roger's eyes faltered in their reassuring gaze.
"I--I wouldn't mind--the _other_ thing, either, if I were you," he
stammered.
"You don't know _what_ you'd do if you were _me_!" the girl cried,
passionately. "You don't know _what_ you'd do if you were hated, and
despised, and laughed at, every day of your life! And how would you
like the feeling that it could never be any different, no matter
where you went, or how hard you tried to be good, or how much you
learned? Never, _never_ any different! Ah, it makes me hate myself, and
everybody! I could tear them to pieces, like this, and this!"
She had risen, and was tearing the scarlet petals of the lilies into
pieces, her teeth set, her eyes flashing.
"Look at them!" she cried wildly. "How like me they are, all red blood
like yours, except those few black drops which never can be washed out!
Never! _Never!_"
And again the child threw herself upon the ground, face downward, and
broke into wild, convulsive sobbing.
Young Roger was in an agony of pity. He found his position as consoler
a trying one. An older person might well have quailed before this
outburst of unchild-like passion. He knew that what she said was
true--terribly, bitterly true, and this kept him dumb. He only stood
and looked down upon the quivering little figure in embarrassed silence.
Suddenly the girl raised her head, with a flash of her eyes.
"What does God mean," she cried, fiercely, "by making such a difference
in people?"
Roger's face became graver still.
"I can't tell you that, Lilly," he answered, soberly. "You'll have to
ask the minister. But I've often thought of it myself. I suppose there
_is_ a reason, if we only knew. I guess all we can do is to begin where
God has put us, and do what we can."
Lilly slowly gathered her disordered hair into one hand and pushed it
behind her shoulders, her tear-stained eyes fixed sadly on the boy's
troubled face.
The tea-bell, sounding from the distance, brought a welcome
interruption, and Roger turned to go. He looked back when half across
the meadow, and saw the little figure standing in relief upon a rocky
hillock, the sun kindling her red locks into gold.
A few years previously, O'Connell had made his appearance in Ridgemont
with wife and child, and had procured a lease of the run-down farm and
buildings which had been their home ever since. It was understood that
they had come from one of the Middle States, but beyond this nothing of
their history was known.
The wife, a beautiful quadroon, sank beneath the severity of the
climate, and lived but a short time. After her death, O'Connell, always
a surly, hot-headed fellow, grew surlier still, and fell into evil
ways. The child, with a curious sort of dignity and independence, took
upon her small shoulders the burden her mother had laid aside, and
carried on the forlorn household in her own way, without assistance or
interference.
That she was not like other children, that she was set apart from
them by some strange circumstance, she had early learned to feel.
In time she began to comprehend in what the difference lay, and the
knowledge roused within her a burning sense of wrong, a fierce spirit
of resistance.
With the creamy skin, the full, soft features, the mellow voice, and
impassioned nature of her quadroon mother, Lilly had inherited the
fiery Celtic hair, gray-green eyes, and quick intelligence of her
father.
She contrived to go to school, where her cleverness placed her ahead
of other girls of her age, but did not raise her above the unreasoning
aversion of her school-mates; and the consciousness of this rankled in
the child's soul, giving to her face a pathetic, hunted look, and to
her tongue a sharpness which few cared to encounter.
Those who knew her best--her teachers, and a few who would not let
their inborn and unconquerable prejudice of race stand in the way of
their judgment--knew that, with all her faults of temper, the girl was
brave, and truthful, and warm-hearted. They pitied the child, born
under a shadow which could never be lifted, and gave her freely the
kind words for which her heart secretly longed.
There was little else they could do, for every attempt at other
kindness was repelled with a proud indifference which forbade further
overtures. So she had gone her way, walking in the shadow which
darkened and deepened as she grew older, until at last she stood upon
the threshold of womanhood.
It was at this period of her life that the incidents we have related
occurred. Small as they were, they proved a crisis in the girl's life.
Too much a child to be capable of forming a definite resolve, or
rather, perhaps, of putting it into form and deliberately setting about
its fulfilment, still the sensitive nature had received an impression,
which became a most puissant influence in shaping her life.
A change came over her, so great as to have escaped no interested eyes;
but interested eyes were few.
Her teachers, more than any others, marked the change. There was more
care of her person and dress, and the raillery of her school-mates was
met by an indifference which, however hard its assumption may have
been, at once disarmed and puzzled them.
Now and then, the low and unprovoked taunts of her boyish tormentors
roused her to an outburst of the old spirit, but for the most part they
were met only with a flash of the steel-gray eyes, and a curl of the
full red lips.
One Sunday, too, to the amazement of pupils and the embarrassment of
teachers, Lilly O'Connell, neatly attired and quite self-possessed,
walked into the Sunday-school, from which she had angrily departed,
stung by some childish slight, two years before. The minister went to
her, welcomed her pleasantly, and gave her a seat in a class of girls
of her own age, who, awed by the mingled dignity and determination of
his manner, swallowed their indignation, and moved along--a trifle more
than was necessary--to give her room.
The little tremor of excitement soon subsided, and Lilly's quickness
and attentiveness won for her an outward show, at least, of
consideration and kindness, which extended outside of school limits,
and gradually, all demonstrations of an unpleasant nature ceased.
When she was about sixteen her father died. This event, which left
her a homeless orphan, was turned by the practical kindness of Parson
Townsend--the good old minister who had stood between her and a
thousand annoyances and wrongs--into the most fortunate event of her
life. He, not without some previous domestic controversy, took the girl
into his own family, and there, under kind and Christian influences,
she lived for a number of years.
At eighteen her school-life terminated, and, by the advice of Parson
Townsend, she applied for a position as teacher of the primary school.
The spirit with which her application was met was a revelation and a
shock to her. The outward kindness and tolerance which of late years
had been manifested toward her, had led her into a fictitious state of
content and confidence.
"I was foolish enough," she said to herself, with bitterness, "to think
that because the boys do not hoot after me in the street, people had
forgotten, or did not care."
The feeling of ostracism stung, but could not degrade, a nature like
hers. She withdrew more and more into herself, turned her hands to such
work as she could find to do, and went her way again, stifling as best
she might the anguished cry which sometimes would rise to her lips:
"What does God mean by it?"
Few saw the beauty of those deep, clear eyes and pathetic lips, or the
splendor of her burnished hair, or the fine curves of her tall, upright
figure. She was only odd, and "queer looking"--only Lilly O'Connell;
very pleasant of speech, and quick at her needle, and useful at picnics
and church fairs, and in case of sickness or emergencies of any
kind,--but Lilly O'Connell still,--or "Tiger-Lily," for the old name
had never been altogether laid aside.
* * * * *
Ten years passed by. The good people of Ridgemont were fond of alluding
to the remarkable progress and development made by their picturesque
little town during the past decade, but in reality the change was not
so great. A few new dwellings, built in the modern efflorescent style,
had sprung up, to the discomfiture of the prim, square houses, with
dingy white paint and dingier green blinds, which belonged to another
epoch; a brick block, of almost metropolitan splendor, cast its shadow
across the crooked village street, and a soldiers' monument, an object
of special pride and reverence, adorned the centre of the small common,
opposite the Hide and Leather Bank and the post-office.
Beside these, a circulating library, a teacher of china-painting and a
colored barber were casually mentioned to strangers, as proofs of the
slightness of difference in the importance of Ridgemont and some other
towns of much more pretension.
Over the old Horton homestead hardly a shadow of change had passed.
It presented the same appearance of prosperous middle age. The great
elms about it looked not a day older; the hydrangeas on the door-step
flowered as exuberantly; the old-fashioned roses bloomed as red, and
white, and yellow, against the mossy brick walls; the flower-plots were
as trim, and the rustic baskets of moneywort flourished as green, as in
the days when Mrs. Horton walked among them, and tended them with her
own hands. She had lain with her busy hands folded these five years,
in the shadow of the Horton monument, between the grave of Dr. Jared
Horton and a row of lessening mounds which had been filled many, many
years--the graves of the children who were born--and had died--before
Roger's birth.
A great quiet had hung about the place for several years. The blinds
upon the front side had seldom been seen to open, except for weekly
airings or semi-annual cleanings.
But one day in mid-summer the parlor windows are seen wide open, the
front door swung back, and several trunks, covered with labels of all
colors, and in several languages, are standing in the large hall.
An unwonted stir about the kitchen and stable, a lively rattling of
silver and china in the dining room, attest to some unusual cause for
excitement. The cause is at once manifest as the door at the end of the
hall opens, and Roger Horton appears, against a background composed of
mahogany side-board and the erect and vigilant figure of Nancy Swift,
the faithful old housekeeper of his mother's time.
The handsome, manly lad had fulfilled the promise of his boyhood. He
was tall and full-chested; a trifle thin, perhaps, and his fine face,
now bronzed with travel, grave and thoughtful for his years, but
capable of breaking into a smile like a sudden transition from a minor
to a major key in music.
He looked more than thoughtful at this moment. He had hardly tasted the
food prepared by Nancy with a keen eye to his youthful predilections,
and in the firm conviction that he must have suffered terrible
deprivations during his foreign travels.
Truly, this coming home was not like the comings-home of other days,
when two dear faces, one gray-bearded and genial, the other pale and
gentle-eyed, had smiled upon him across the comfortable board. The
sense of loss was almost more than he could bear; the sound of his own
footsteps in the cool, empty hall smote heavily upon his heart.
The door of the parlor stood ajar, and he pushed it open and stepped
into the room. Everything was as it had always been ever since he could
remember--furniture, carpets, curtains, everything. Just opposite the
door hung the portraits of his parents, invested by the dim half-light
with a life-like air which the unknown artist had vainly tried to
impart.
Roger had not entered the room since his mother's funeral, which
followed close upon that of his father, and just before the close of
his collegiate course.
Something in the room brought those scenes of bitter grief too vividly
before him. It might have been the closeness of the air, or, more
probably, the odor rising from a basket of flowers which stood upon the
centre-table. He remembered now that Nancy had mentioned its arrival
while he was going through the ceremony of taking tea, and he went up
to the table and bent over it. Upon a snowy oval of choicest flowers,
surrounded by a scarlet border, the word "Welcome" was wrought in
purple violets.
The young man smiled as he read the name upon the card attached. He
took up one of the white carnations and began fastening it to the
lapel of his coat, but put it back at length, and with a glance at the
painted faces, whose eyes seemed following his every motion, he took
his hat and went out of the house.
His progress through the streets of his native village took the form of
an ovation. Nearly every one he met was an old acquaintance or friend.
It warmed his heart, and took away the sting of loneliness which he
had felt before, to see how cordial were the greetings. Strong, manly
grips, kind, womanly hand-pressures, and shy, blushing greetings from
full-fledged village beauties, whom he vaguely remembered as lank,
sun-burned little girls, met him at every step.
He noticed, and was duly impressed by, the ornate new dwellings, the
soldiers' monument, and the tonsorial establishment of Professor
Commeraw. But beyond these boasted improvements, it might have been
yesterday, instead of four years ago, that he passed along the same
street on his way to the station. Even Deacon White's sorrel mare was
hitched before the leading grocery-store in precisely the same spot,
and blinking dejectedly at precisely the same post, he could have taken
his oath, where she had stood and blinked on that morning.
Before the tumble-down structure where, in connection with the
sale of petrified candy, withered oranges, fly-specked literature,
and gingerpop, the post-office was carried on, sat that genial old
reprobate, the post-master, relating for the hundredth time to a sleepy
and indifferent audience, his personal exploits in the late war;
pausing, however, long enough to bestow upon Horton a greeting worthy
of the occasion.
"Welcome home!" said Mr. Doolittle, with an oratorical flourish, as
became a politician and a post-master; "welcome back to the land of the
free and the home of the brave!"
Whereupon he carefully seated himself on the precarious chair which
served him as rostrum, and resumed his gory narrative.
A little further on, another village worthy, Fred Hanniford, cobbler,
vocalist, and wit, sat pegging away in the door of his shop, making the
welkin ring with the inspiring strains of "The Sword of Bunker Hill,"
just as in the old days. True, the brilliancy of his tones was somewhat
marred by the presence of an ounce or so of shoe-pegs in his left
cheek, but this fact had no dampening effect upon the enthusiasm of a
select, peanut-consuming audience of small boys on the steps.
He, too, suspended work and song to nod familiarly to his somewhat
foreignized young townsman, and watched him turn the corner, fixing
curious and jealous eyes upon the receding feet.
"Who made your boots?" he remarked _sotto voce_, as their firm rap
upon the plank sidewalk grew indistinct, which profound sarcasm having
extracted the expected meed of laughter from his juvenile audience,
Mr. Hanniford resumed his hammer, and burst forth with a high G of
astounding volume.
As young Horton came in sight of Mrs. Fairfield's residence, he
involuntarily quickened his steps. As a matter of course, he had met
in his wanderings many pretty and agreeable girls, and, being an
attractive young man, it is safe to say that eyes of every hue had
looked upon him with more or less favor. It would be imprudent to
venture the assertion that the young man had remained quite indifferent
to all this, but Horton's nature was more tender than passionate;
early associations held him very closely, and his boyish fancy for
the widow's pretty daughter had never quite faded. A rather fitful
correspondence had been kept up, and photographs exchanged, and he felt
himself justified in believing that the welcome the purple violets had
spoken would speak to him still more eloquently from a pair of violet
eyes.
He scanned the pretty lawn with a pleased, expectant glance. Flowers
were massed in red, white and purple against the vivid green; the
fountain was scattering its spray; hammocks were slung in tempting
nooks, and fanciful wicker chairs, interwoven with blue and scarlet
ribbons, stood about the vine-draped piazza. He half expected a girlish
figure to run down the walk to meet him, in the old childish way,
and as a fold of white muslin swept out of the open window his heart
leaped; but it was only the curtain after all, and just as he saw this
with a little pang of disappointment, a girl's figure did appear, and
came down the walk toward him. It was a tall figure, in a simple dark
dress. As it came nearer, he saw a colorless, oval face, with downcast
eyes, and a mass of ruddy hair, burnished like gold, gathered in a coil
under the small black hat. There was something proud, yet shrinking,
in the face and in the carriage of the whole figure. As the latch fell
from his hand the girl looked up, and encountered his eyes, pleased,
friendly and a trifle astonished, fixed full upon her.
She stopped, and a beautiful color swept into her cheeks, a sudden
unleaping flame filled the luminous eyes, and her lips parted.
"Why, it is Lilly O'Connell!" the young man said, cordially, extending
his hand.
The girl's hand was half extended to meet his, but with a quick glance
toward the house she drew it back into the folds of her black dress,
bowing instead.
Horton let his hand fall, a little flush showing itself upon his
forehead.
"Are you not going to speak to me, Miss O'Connell?" he said, in his
frank, pleasant way. "Are you not going to say you are glad to see me
back, like all the rest?"
The color had all faded from the girl's cheeks and neck. She returned
his smiling glance with an earnest look, hesitating before she spoke.
"I am very glad, Mr. Horton," she said, at last, and, passing him, went
swiftly out of sight.
The young man stood a moment with his hand upon the gate, looking
after her; then turned and went up the walk to the door, and rang the
bell. A smiling maid admitted him, and showed him into a very pretty
drawing-room.
He had not waited long when Florence, preceded by her mother, came
in. She had been a pretty school-girl, but he was hardly prepared
to see so beautiful a young woman, or one so self-possessed, and so
free from provincialism in dress and manner. She was a blonde beauty,
of the delicate, porcelain-tinted type, small, but so well-made and
well-dressed as to appear much taller than she really was. She was
lovely to-night in a filmy white dress, so richly trimmed with lace as
to leave the delicate flesh-tints of shoulders and arms visible through
the fine meshes.
She had always cared for Roger, and, being full of delight at his
return and his distinguished appearance, let her delight appear
undisguisedly. Although a good deal of a coquette, with Roger coquetry
seemed out of place. His own simple, sincere manners were contagious,
and Florence had never been more charming.
"Tell us all about the pictures and artists and singers you have seen
and heard," she said, in the course of their lively interchange of
experiences.
"I am afraid I can talk better about hospitals and surgeons," said
Horton. "You know I am not a bit æsthetic, and I have been studying
very closely."
"You are determined, then, to practise medicine?" Mrs. Fairfield said,
with rather more anxiety in her tones than the occasion seemed to
demand.
"I think I am better fitted for that profession than any other," Horton
answered.
"Y-yes," assented Mrs. Fairfield, doubtfully, looking at her daughter.
"I should never choose it, if I were a man," said Florence, decidedly.
"It seems to have chosen me," Horton said. "I have not the slightest
bent in any other direction."
"It is such a hard life," said Florence. "A doctor must be a perfect
hero."
"You used to be enthusiastic over heroes," said Horton, smiling.
"I am now," said Florence, "but----"
"Not the kind who ride in buggies instead of on foaming chargers
and wield lancets instead of lances," laughed Horton, looking into
the slightly vexed but lovely face opposite, with a great deal of
expression in his dark eyes.
"Of course you would not think of settling in Ridgemont," remarked Mrs.
Fairfield, blandly, "after all you have studied."
"I don't see why not," he answered.
"But for an ambitious young man," began Mrs. Fairfield.
"I'm afraid I am not an ambitious young man," said Horton. "There is a
good opening here, and the old home is very dear to me."
Florence was silently studying the toe of one small sandalled foot.
"Well, to be sure," said Mrs. Fairfield, who always endeavored to fill
up pauses in conversation,--"to be sure, Ridgemont _is_ improving.
Don't you find it changed a good deal?"
"Why, not very much," Horton answered. "Places don't change so much
in a few years as people. I met Lilly O'Connell as I came into your
grounds. _She_ has changed--wonderfully."
"Y-yes," said Mrs. Fairfield, rather stiffly. "She _has_ improved.
Since her father died, she has lived in Parson Townsend's family. She
is a very respectable girl, and an excellent seamstress."
Florence had gone to the window, and was looking out.
"She was very good at her books, I remember," he went on. "I used to
think she would make something more than a seamstress."
"I only remember her dreadful temper," said Florence, in a tone meant
to sound careless. "We called her 'Tiger-Lily,' you know."
"I never wondered at her temper," said Horton. "She had a great deal to
vex her. I suppose things are not much better now."
"Oh, she is treated well enough," said Mrs. Fairfield. "The best
families in the place employ her. I don't know what more she can
expect, considering that she is--a----"
"Off color," suggested Horton. "No. She cannot expect much more. But it
is terrible--isn't it?--that stigma for no fault of hers. It must be
hard for a girl like her--like what she seems to have become."
"Oh, as to that," said Florence, going to the piano and drumming
lightly, without sitting down, "she is very independent. She asserts
herself quite enough."
"Why, yes," broke in her mother, hastily. "She actually had the
impudence to apply for a position as teacher of the primary school, and
Parson Townsend, and Hickson of the School Board, were determined she
should have it. The 'Gazette' took it up, and for awhile Lilly was the
heroine of the day. But of course she did not succeed. It would have
ruined the school. A colored teacher! Dreadful!"
"Dreadful, indeed," said Horton. He rose and joined Florence at the
piano, and a moment later Mrs. Fairfield was contentedly drumming upon
the table, in the worst possible time, to her daughter's performance of
a brilliant waltz.
The evening terminated pleasantly. After Horton had gone, mother and
daughter had a long confidential talk upon the piazza, which it is
needless to repeat. But at its close, as Mrs. Fairfield was closing the
doors for the night, she might have been heard to say:
"You could spend your _winters_ in Boston, you know."