MAY GILCHRIST had not overestimated her persuasive powers. A call on
Mrs. Wayt, undertaken as soon as she had seen, from her watch window,
the tall, black figure of the clergyman issue from his gate, and
take his way down-town, won his wife’s sanction to the presence of
her sister and daughter in the orchard that afternoon to watch Miss
Gilchrist’s brother upon a sketch he proposed to begin before the apple
blossoms fell.
“I shall be there, of course,” the young diplomatist mentioned
casually. “I am studying art in an amateurish way, under my brother’s
direction. I dearly enjoy seeing him paint. His hand is so firm and
rapid, and his eye so true! Your daughter tells me she is fond of
drawing. March and I would be only too happy to render any assistance
in our power to forward her studies in that line.”
“My sister has spoken to me of your kindness and his,” Mrs. Wayt
answered thoughtfully. “She told me also that she had referred the
question of accepting Mr. Gilchrist’s generous proposition to me.
Hesitation seems ungracious, but my poor child is very excitable, and
in nerve so unfit to work long at anything that I have doubted the
expediency of allowing her to become interested in her favorite pursuit
to the extent necessary for the acquisition of any degree of skill.”
Nevertheless May went home victorious, and Mrs. Wayt, disquiet in eye
and soul, sought her sister and detailed the steps of the siege and the
surrender.
“Refusal was impossible without risking the displeasure of influential
parishioners, or exciting suspicions that might be more hurtful,” she
concluded.
Hetty was cleaning silver in the dining room. Over her buff gingham
she wore a voluminous bib apron; housewifely solicitude informed her
whole personality. Her hair was turned back from her temples, and the
roughened roll showed rust-red lights in a bar of sunshine crossed by
her head as she moved. The lines of her face had what Hester called
“their forenoon _sag_,” a downward inclination that signified as
much care as she could bear. She rubbed a tablespoon until she could
see each loosened hair and drooping line in it, before unclosing her
thinned lips to reply. Even then her speech was reluctant.
“The child is yours, Frances—not mine, dearly as I love her. I
understand as well as you how cruel it seems to deny her what is, in
itself, a harmless pleasure. Still, we have agreed up to this time
that it is inexpedient to give people the run of the house, and this
looks like a straight road to that.”
She did not glance up in speaking, or afterward. Her accent was
unimpassioned, her thoughts apparently engrossed in the business of
bringing polish out of tarnish.
“There are circumstances that may alter cases—and premises,” returned
Mrs. Wayt deprecatingly. “I cannot but feel that we may begin to argue
and determine from a different standpoint. I wish you could be a little
more sanguine, dear.”
“You don’t wish it more than I do, sister! I wasn’t built upon the
‘Hope on, Hope ever’ plan. My utmost effort in that direction is to
make the best of what cannot be bettered. And since you have said ‘Yes’
to this painting scheme we will think only of what a boon it will be
to Hester. The new cook is a more imminent difficulty. This house is
large, and the salary excellent, I admit, but it would have been wise
to wait until our arrival before engaging her.”
She knew that her sister was as much surprised as herself at Mr. Wayt’s
commission to Mrs. Gilchrist, also that the wife would not plead this
ignorance in self-defense.
“Homer, you, and I could have divided the housework, as we did in
other places,” continued Hetty, attacking a row of forks, now that the
spoons were done with, “and we could hire a woman by the day to wash
and iron. The cook may justify Mrs. Gilchrist’s recommendation. I dare
say she will. Only—but I’ll not utter another croak to-day! You are
an angelic optimist, and I am given over to pessimism of the opposite
type. We will accept Mary Ann and the rest of the goods the Fairhill
gods provide, including the open-air studio, eat, drink, and be merry,
and make up our minds that to-morrow we _won’t_ die! I’d seal the
covenant with a kiss if I were quite certain that I am not silicon-ed
up to the eyes.”
Mrs. Wayt bore a pained and heavy heart to the nursery and her mending
basket. She loved Hetty fondly, and with what abundant reason no one
knew so well as the heroic wife of a selfishly eccentric man. She
trusted her sister’s sterling sense, and in most instances was willing
to abide by her judgment, but there were radical differences in their
views upon certain subjects. The very pains Hetty took to avert open
discussion of what lay like a carking blight upon the spirits of both
caused friction and rawness, and the feigned levity with which she
closed the door upon the topic would have been insult from anyone
else. She had no alternative but to submit, no help but in the Refuge
of all pure souls tempted almost out of measure by the sins and
perversities of those dearest to them. Upon the knees of her heart she
besought wisdom and comfort, and—sweet satire upon the pious duty of
self-examination!—forgiveness for her intolerance of others’ foibles!
Baby Annie was building block houses upon the floor, and filling them
with dandelions. Homer had brought a small basketful up to her just
before Mrs. Wayt was summoned to her visitor, and had helped the
child erect a castle while the mother was below. Upon her entrance,
he shuffled out as sheepishly as if she had detected him rifling the
pockets of her husband’s Sunday clothes. These lay over a chair by
her work table. While she prayed, her fingers plied the needle upon a
ripped lining and two loose buttons.
“See, mamma,” entreated the little one. “So many dandeyions! Annie make
house for dee papa!” The mother stooped to kiss her; a tear splashed
upon the mass of wilting golden disks packed into papa’s treasure
chamber. At the same age Hester had prattled of “dee papa,” and was his
faithful shadow wherever he would allow her to follow. He had been too
busy of late years and too distraught by various anxieties to take much
notice of the younger children, but he had made a pet of little Hester.
He used to call her “Lassie with glory crowned,” as he twined and
burnished her sunny curls around his fingers. Annie was a loving little
darling, but neither so sprightly nor so beautiful as her first-born
at the same age. She worshiped her father, and he was beginning to
recognize and be pleased by her preference.
“Poor Percy!”
“Papa sick?” asked the child, startled by the ejaculation.
“No, my darling. Papa is very well. Mamma is only sorry! sorry!
_sorry!_”
“Sorry! sorry! _sorry!_ Mamma sorry! sorry! _sorry!_” While she crammed
the yellow flowers into the castle, the baby made the words into a
song, catching intonation and emphasis as they had escaped her mother’s
lips.
Dandelions dying were as fair to her as dandelions golden-crisp in the
meadow grass. A drop of blood, red from the heart, would mean no more
than a coral bead.
At three o’clock, Hester’s chair was drawn by Homer into the orchard.
The painter, his sister, his dog, and his easel were already in place.
March had sketched in the arbor, and indicated the figures sufficiently
to reveal the purpose of the picture.
Blossom-time is short, but fortunately the weather that week was
phenomenally equable for May. In eight days the painting was finished.
The reader may have noticed it at the Academy exhibition the next
winter, where it was catalogued as “The Defense.” Hetty’s portrait and
pose were admirably rendered, and the bound of the big St. Bernard was
fiercely spirited. But the wonder of the group was the occupant of the
low wicker carriage.
“My baby daughter!” faltered Mrs. Wayt, on first seeing it, and no more
words would come.
To herself and to March, later and confidentially, Hetty spoke of it as
“Hester glorified.” At times, she was almost afraid to look at it. It
was the face of an infant, but an infant whose soul had outleaped the
limitations of years. The filmy gold of her hair lay, cloudlike, about
her, her perfectly molded hands were clasped in the fearless delight of
ignorance as she leaned forward to welcome the enemy her custodian was
ready to beat off. It was Hester in every lineament.
Even the baby knew it. But it was Hester as her brothers and sisters
would never see her unless among the fadeless blossoms of the world
where crooked things will be made straight.
March Gilchrist was not poetical except with his brush. It was his
tongue, his song, his story. Through it Hetty Alling first learned to
know him, yet they were never strangers after that earliest meeting
in the orchard. She was a capital sitter, and he lingered over her
portrait as he dared not over Hester’s for fear of wearying her. While
Hetty posed, and he painted, May and Hester became warm friends. Miss
Gilchrist had her own sketchbook, and March improvised an easel for
it, which was attached to the wheeled chair, in desk fashion. Under
May’s tutelage Hester made a study of apple blossoms, and another of
plumy grasses which the overlooker praised with honest warmth, and
promised to keep forever as souvenirs of the “pink-and-white week.”
The robins were so used to the sight of the social group that they
exchanged tender confidences freely overhead, as to summer plans and
prospective birdlings. Thor’s massive bulk crushed, daily, the same
area of sunny turf, and he may have had canine views as to the folly of
working when the sun was warm and the sod softest. The orchard, where
every tree was a mighty bouquet, was an impervious screen between the
party and the streets and such windows as commanded the slope.
“It is paradise, with rows upon rows of shining, fluffy angels to keep
out the rest of the world!” said Hester, on the afternoon of the last
sitting. “I’m glad it is we who are inside! And not another soul!”
March was dabbling his brushes in a wide-mouthed bottle of turpentine,
preparatory to putting them up.
“Nothing exclusive about her—is there?” he laughed to Hetty, in mock
admiration.
She answered in the same vein:
“She was always an incorrigible aristocrat!”
“Say a beggarly aristocrat, and free your mind!” retorted Hester
good-humoredly. “I don’t care who knows it. Who doesn’t prefer a select
coterie to a promiscuous ‘crush’? I’d like to dig out this orchard
just as I would a square of turf, and set it down in the middle of the
South Seas (wherever they may be) where the trees wouldn’t shed their
blossoms the whole year round, and we four—with the robins and Thor
thrown in ornamentally—might paint and talk and live forever and a day.
I used to wonder what answer I would make to the fairy who offered
three wishes—but I am quite ready for her now. I’d fuse them all into
one!”
“Are you sure? Going! Going! the last call! _Gone!_” cried March,
bringing down his biggest brush, _à la_ auctioneer’s hammer, upon
Thor’s head.
“Gone it is!” responded Hester, folding her tiny hands upon her heart,
and closing her eyes in an ecstasy of satisfaction. “Let nobody speak
for five minutes. (Look at your watch, Mr. Gilchrist!) For five minutes
we will make believe that the deed is done, and we are translated. I
hear the surf on the shores of the
“Dear little isle of our own,
Where the winds never sigh, and the skies never weep.
“Hush!”
They humored this one of her caprices, as they had others. She was full
of fancies, some odd, some ghastly, some graceful. Even practical May
yielded obedience to the mandate, and, laying her head against the
bole of the tree, met the bright eye of the mother robin peering over
the edge of her nest with what May chose to interpret as a wink of
intelligent amusement.
“She asked me as plainly as dumb show could ask, who would provide
three meals a day for the happy exclusives, and, when I alluded to
breadfruit trees and beefsteak geraniums, wanted to know where ovens
and gridirons would come from,” said May afterward; “That formed the
basis of _my_ five-minute reverie.”
My soul, to-day,
Is far away,
Sailing the Vesuvian bay;
My winged boat,
A bird afloat,
Swims ’round the purple peaks remote.
So runs the poem, between the lines of which might be written the
exultant, “_Absent from the body!_” Hester’s soul had the poet’s power
of “drifting” into absolute idealization. She was used to building with
dream stuff. In the time she had allotted, she lived out a lifetime, to
tell of which would require hours and many pages. That she paid for the
wide sweep into the remote and the never-to-be, by reaction bitterer
than death, never dissuaded her from other voyages of the “winged
boat.”
For perhaps sixty seconds Hetty, sitting upon the turf by the recumbent
Thor, and idly pulling his shaggy hair, reflected regretfully upon this
certain reflex action; then, as if uttered in her ear, recurred the
words: “Where we four might paint, and talk, and _live_ forever!”
“We four!” Involuntarily, her eye sped from one to another of the
group; from May’s placid visage and smile upraised to the robin’s
nest, to the face framed about by pale blue cushions—colorless as wax,
the pain lines effaced by the sweet exaltation oftenest seen upon the
forehead and mouth of a dead child—consciousness, rising into majesty,
of having compassed all that is given to the human creature to know,
the full possession of a happy secret to be shared with none who still
bear the weight of mortality. Hetty’s heart slackened its beat while
she gazed upon the motionless features. Her “child” was, for the time,
rapt beyond her reach. Yet it was only “make believe” after all, that
snared her into temporary bliss!
Before the pang of the thought got firm hold of her she met March
Gilchrist’s eyes, full, and fixed upon hers.
He lay along the grass, supporting himself on his left elbow, his
cheek upon his hand, the other hand, still holding the big brush, had
fallen across Thor’s back. His eyes were startled, as by an unexpected
revelation, and as her glance touched them, sudden, glad light leaped
from depth to surface. He would not release her regard—not even when
the glow that succeeded the numbness of the thrill stole from limb
to limb, and suffused her face, and all the forceful maiden nature
battled with the magnetic compulsion. The sough of the spring breeze
in the flower-laden branches, likened by Hester to the whispering
surf upon island sands; the humming bees and twittering birds; the
sun-warmed scent of apple blooms and white clover and the sweetbrier
growing just without the canopy of the king apple tree; the faint flush
of light strained through locked masses of blossoms, were, for those
supreme moments, all the world—except that this man—God’s most glorious
creation—spoke to her, although his lips were moveless, and that the
stir of a new and divine life within her heart replied.
“I am sure the time must be up!” said May yawningly. “Poor Hester is
fast asleep, and my tongue aches with holding it so long.”
Hester unclosed her eyes slowly, smiled dreamily, and essayed no
denial. March was on his knees, collecting brushes and tubes into his
color box. Hetty was folding a rug so much too heavy for her wrists
that May sprang to seize the other end.
“Why—are you chilly? Your fingers are like ice!” she exclaimed, as
their hands met. “And how you shiver! I am afraid we have been selfish
in keeping you out of doors so long!”
The ague shook the mirth out of the nervous laugh with which Hetty
answered:
“Now that the strain of the week’s suspense and sittings is over, and
the result of our joint labors is a pronounced success, I am a little
tired. The spring is a trifle crude as yet, too,” she subjoined,
speaking more glibly than usual. “By the time the sun reaches the tops
of the trees, we begin to feel the dew fall. Hester, we must go in!”
March took the handle of the wheeled chair from her. “That is too heavy
for you on the thick grass. May, will you abide by the stuff until I
come back?”
On every other afternoon, Homer had come down at five o’clock to roll
the carriage up the ascent. Hester lay among the pillows, her eyes
again shut, and the reflection of the happy secret upon her face. Hetty
walked mutely beside her.
March liked the fine reserve that kept her silent and forbade her to
risk another encounter of glances. She was all womanly, refined in
every instinct. Crushing the young grasses with foot and wheel, and
bowing under the stooping branches, they made their way to the gate in
the parsonage fence. Homer shambled hurriedly down the walk to meet
them.
“Now”—he stammered, laying hold of the propeller of the chair—“I’d ’a
bin yere sooner, but I had to go downtown on an arrant——”
“That’s all right!” said March good-naturedly. “I was happy to bring
Miss Wayt up the hill. Good-by, Queen Mab! May I have the honor of
taking you to my home studio to see the picture when it is varnished
and framed?”
She replied by a gentle inclination of the head, and the same joyous
ghost of a smile. She was like one lost in a dream, so deep and
delicious that he will not move or speak for fear of awakening.
March raised his hat and stood aside to let the carriage pass. As Hetty
would have followed, his offered hand barred the way.
“One moment, please!” he said, in grave simplicity. “I have to thank
you for some very happy hours. May I, also, thank you for the hope of
many more? I should be sorry if our acquaintanceship were to fall to
the level of social conventionality. We have always been intimate with
our pastor’s family, and mean, unless forbidden, to remain true to
time-honored precedent.”
If he had alarmed her just now, he would prove that he was no
love-smitten boy, but a purposeful man, who understood himself and was
obedient to law and order. Hetty gathered herself together to emulate
his tranquillity.
“I especially want to thank _you_, out of her hearing, for the great
kindness you and your sister have showed to my dear little invalid.
She will never forget it, nor shall I. It has been the happiest week
of her life. I think but for your offer to lend her books, and Miss
Gilchrist’s promise to keep on with her painting lessons, that the end
of our sittings would be a serious affliction to her. Please say this
from me to Miss Gilchrist, also. Good-evening!”
He ran lightly back to May and “the stuff.” He had not obtained
permission to call, but neither was it refused. He liked dignity in a
woman. As he phrased it, “it furred the peach and dusted the plum.” He
was entirely willing to do all the wooing.
May innocently applied the last touch to his unruffled spirit in their
family confabulation in the library that evening.
“That Hetty Alling is one of the most delightful girls I ever met!” she
asseverated emphatically.
“In what respect?” inquired her judicial parent.
“She has individuality—and of the best sort. She is intelligent, frank,
spirited, and with these sterling qualities, as gentle as a saint
with poor little Hester, who must be a great care to one so young as
Hetty. I mean to do all I can to brighten the monotonous existence the
two girls must lead. From all I can gather without asking impertinent
questions, they are thrown almost entirely upon one another for
entertainment and happiness. It is an oddly assorted household, taken
as a whole.”
“Talking of originality,” observed March after a meditative puff or
two, “you have it in the niece. It is fearfully sad that such a mind
should be crowded into the body of a dwarf. She dotes upon books. If
you will look up a dozen or so that you think she—or Miss Alling—would
enjoy, I will take them over to-morrow.”
His mother’s attitude changed slightly, although her face was
unaltered. She seemed to hold her breath to listen, her whole inner
being to quicken into intensity of interest. March, stretched
luxuriously upon the rug, in his usual post-prandial attitude, felt her
sigh.
“Do I tire you, mother, dear?” he asked.
“Never, my boy!”
Nor ever would, although within the hour and with a throe that tested
her reserves of fortitude, she had surrendered the first place in
his heart. The blow was unexpected. The orchard paintings and her
children’s interest in them had seemed entirely professional to her.
March had sketched dozens of girls, and fallen in love with none of
them. With all his warmth of heart and ready sensibilities, he was not
susceptible to feminine charms. As a boy, he became enamored of art too
early to have other flames. Perhaps, with fatuity common to mothers,
she reasoned that with such a home as his he was not likely to be
tempted by visions of domestic bliss under a vine and fig tree yet to
be planted. It is a grievous problem to the maternal intellect why men
who have the best mothers and sisters living and eager to spoil them
with much serving, should be the earliest to marry out of certainty
into hazardous uncertainty.
When the judge had gone to a political meeting, and May to entertain
visitors in the drawing room, Mrs. Gilchrist divined the purport of
the impending communication. Her fair hand grew clammy in toying with
the short chestnut curls; in the silence through which she could hear
the tinkle of the fountain on the lawn, she wet her dry lips that
they might not be unready with loving rejoinder to what her idol was
preparing to say. She knew March too well to expect conventional
preamble. He was always direct and genuine. She did not start when he
spoke at length.
“Mamma, darling.”
“Yes, my son.”
“It has come to me at last, and in earnest.”
“I surmised as much.” It was plain to see where he got his dislike of
circuitous methods. “Is it Mrs. Wayt’s sister?”
“It is Hetty Alling. She is a true, noble woman. I shall try to win her
love. Should I succeed, you will love her for my sake, will you not?”
“You know that I will. But this is sudden. You have known her less
than a fortnight. And, dear, it is out of the fullness of my love that
I speak—I am afraid that the family is a peculiar one. Be prudent, my
son. You are young, and life is long. I cannot bear that you should
make a mistake here. Should this young girl be all that you think—even
all that I hope to find in her—it is best not to force her decision.
Give her time to study you. Take time, and make opportunities to study
_her_. I ask it because you bear the names of two honorable men—your
father and mine—and because it would break your mother’s heart to see
her only boy unhappy.”
He drew her hand to his lips—the high-bred hand that would always be
beautiful—and held it there for a moment. She had his pledge.
Hetty had followed Hester into the house. It was half-past five, and
there were strawberries to be capped for the half-past six dinner.
A parishioner had left a generous supply of Southern berries at the
door while the girls were out, and had taken Mrs. Wayt and her little
daughters to drive. Aunt and niece sat down at a table drawn before
the dining-room window and fell to work. Hester’s high chair brought
her tiny, dexterous fingers to a level with Hetty’s. The task went
forward with silent rapidity, and neither noted the direction of her
companion’s eyes. Hetty seemed to her dazed self to bear about with
her the charmed atmosphere of the nook under the king apple tree.
The mingled hum of bees and sighing wind and bird-note sounded in her
ears like the confused song of a seashell. Now and then, a ray from
hazel eyes flashed athwart her sight. Brain and heart were in a tumult
that terrified her into questioning her identity. The “winged boat”
of fancy was a novel craft to our woman of affairs. As novel was the
self-absorption that made her unobservant of Hester’s brilliant eyes
and musing smile. As the dainty fingers, just reddened on the tips
by the fruit, picked off and cast aside the green “caps,” Hester’s
regards were fixed upon the Anak of the orchard, and Hetty’s strayed
continually to the same point. Both looked over and beyond a figure
creeping on all-fours down the central alley of the broad, shallow
garden, occasionally crouching low, as if to crop the grass of the
borders.
Perry, studying his Latin grammar in his mother’s chamber above, awoke
the taciturn dreamers by a shout:
“Hello, Tony! what _are_ you doing there?”
He turned his head, not his body, to reply:
“Now—jes’ lookin’ for somethin’ I dropped.”
“You’ll drop yourself some day if you don’t watch out!”
Hester’s unmusical cackle broke forth.
“Does he look more like a praying mantis—or Nebuchadnezzar?” she said
to her co-worker. “He reminds me of a funny thing I heard a man say
when I was a child of a picture in my catechism of Nebuchadnezzar
feeding in the pasture with a herd of cows. He said it was ‘a fine
study of comparative anatomy.’ The advantage would be on the side of
the cows if Tony were to take the field.”
Hetty could not but laugh with her in looking at the grotesque object.
“A short sight is a real affliction—poor fellow! It is to be hoped that
he has ‘dropped’ nothing valuable. I will take the bowl and ‘caps’ into
the kitchen when I have laid you down upon the lounge. Your poor back
must ache by this time.”
She lingered a few minutes in the kitchen to make sure that everything
was in train for dinner. Her practical knowledge of all departments of
housewifery had already gained for her Mary Ann’s profound respect. The
cook recommended by Mrs. Gilchrist was a tidy body, a capital worker,
and, as she vaunted herself, “one as took an _intrust_ in any family
she lived in.”
“I ast that pore innocent feller if there was any parsley in the
gairdin,” she chuckled to Hetty, “an’ he said he’d fetch me a bunch to
gairnish me dishes. But I’ve niver laid eyes onto him since. I mistrust
he don’t know one yarb from another. Is he ‘all there,’ d’ye think,
mem?”
“He is not quick, but he is not an idiot, by any means,” returned his
patroness. “He is a faithful, honest fellow, always thankful for a kind
word, very industrious, and perfectly truthful. We think a great deal
of Homer. I saw him in the garden just now, looking for the parsley. I
will find him and send him in with it. Don’t sugar the berries; we do
that on the table. Keep them in a cool place until they are wanted for
dessert.”
She strolled down the garden walk, singing low to herself the catching
tune to which she had set the words the Gilchrists had overheard the
Sunday night of their first call:
O Life and Love! O happy throng
Of thoughts whose only speech is song.
O heart of man! canst thou not be
Blithe as the air is, and as free?
Homer had vanished from the main alley that led directly to the
orchard, yet she walked on down the whole length of it. Blazing tulips
had supplanted faded hyacinths; the faint green globes of snowball
bushes were bleaching hourly in May sunshine and breeze; the lilac
hedge, lining the post-and-board fence at the bottom of the parsonage
lot, was set thick with purple and mauve and white spikes.
“Such a dear, old-fashioned garden!” Hetty said, half aloud. “It
reminds me of the one we had at home!” Leaning upon the orchard gate
she abandoned herself to reverie. The robins’ whistle in the apple tree
was low and tender; fleecy clouds, drifting toward the west, began to
blush on the sunward side, the blending odors of a thousand flowers
hung in the air. The word “home” took thought back—thoughts of the
only one she had ever had, and the mother whose death lost it to her.
Since then she had stood alone, and helped weaker people to stand. A
great longing for rest in a love she could claim as all hers drove
tears to her eyes. The longing was not new, but the hope that softened
it was. Hitherto, it had been linked with her mother’s image only. She
wanted her now, as much, and more than ever before, but that she might
sympathize with what she began to comprehend tremblingly. Her mother
would enter into her trembling and her joy. Especially if she had seen
what Hetty never could describe—a look the memory of which renewed the
shy, delicious shame expressed in the blush March had pitied, while
rejoicing in the sight of it.
Such a boundless, beautiful world opened to her while she stood there,
looking down the blossoming vistas of the orchard—solitary, yet
comforted! She would give rein to imagination for that little while. It
could harm no one, even if it were all a chimera that would not outlast
blossom-time. And must it be _that_? What had glorified other desolate
women’s lives might bless hers. Spring comes to every year, however
long and cruel may have been the winter. Recalling March’s prophecy of
future association, she dared dwell upon visions of his visits, of the
pleasant familiar talks that would make them better acquainted; of the
books they would read and discuss; of the pictures he would paint, with
her looking on.
“I am not beautiful or accomplished,” she said humbly. “But I would
make myself more worthy of him. I am young and apt. I would make no
mistakes that could mortify him. He should never be ashamed of me, and,
oh!” she stretched her arms involuntarily, as if to draw the unseen
nearer to her heart—“how faithfully I would serve him, forever and
forever.”
The flight of fancy had indeed been fast and far!
The tinkle of the dinner bell in Mary Ann’s vigorous hand ended the
fond foolishness abruptly. It was the careful housewife who asked
herself with a guilty start: “What has become of Homer and the parsley?”
Her first step in returning was upon something hard. She picked it up.
* * * * *
Homer met his young mistress at the back door. His weak, furtive eyes
were uneasy before she accosted him. At her incisive tone the red rims
closed entirely over them, his hands, grimy with groping in gravel and
turf, fumbled with one another, and his loose jaw dangled.
“Homer, you said this afternoon that you had been out to do an errand.
Do not leave the place again without letting me know where you are
going, and for what.”
“Now,” he began wretchedly, “you wasn’t at home, ’n I thought——”
“I forbid you to think! I will do the thinking for this family. You
knew where to find me. If you had not, you ought to have waited until I
got back. I mean what I say!”
He shifted miserably from one foot to the other, and, as she passed
him, cleared his dry throat.
“Now, ’spose Mrs. Wayt was to send me out in a hurry?”
“Tell her that you have my orders.”
“Now——”
She looked over her shoulder at him, impatient and contemptuous. He had
never seen her so angry with him before. He plucked at the battered
brim of an old military cap clutched in one hand. He had found it in
the garret, and believed that it became him rarely.
“I was ’bout to say as I hed los’ what I hed——”
“I found it. Not another word! There is no excuse for you!”