The stranger regarded Molly’s saucy rejoinder as the effect of an
injury done to her brain by her fall from the horse, and said to
himself, pityingly:
“She evidently struck upon her head and the shock has disordered her
brain, but I trust the affliction will prove but momentary.”
She was sitting upright now regarding him with vexed, dark eyes when he
said, smilingly:
“Since you dispute my assertion permit me to prove it. Look yonder!”
Molly turned her head and saw the handsome bay horse standing still in
the road as if conscious of his misdemeanor.
Her memory came quickly back.
“Oh!” she exclaimed.
“You remember?” he rejoined.
“Yes.”
Her face and eyes looked very arch and saucy as she continued:
“I suppose you take me for an escaped lunatic?”
“Oh, no,” with a provoking smile on the handsome lips, “only a very
giddy girl whose memory was temporarily obscured by her fall.”
“And you don’t like giddy girls?” Molly interrogated, with a decisive
pout.
“Not--usually,” he returned with a sparkle of mischief in his eyes.
Molly sprang to her feet with considerable agility, considering that
she had declared she felt as if all her bones were broken.
“Neither do I like hateful prigs!” she returned, with asperity. “So I
will bid you good-evening, sir.”
Dropping him a pert little courtesy, she ran toward the horse, but as
she lifted her little foot to the stirrup she found him at her elbow.
“Permit me,” he said, and lifted the light figure quickly to the saddle.
Then he detained the reins in his hands a moment.
“Do you know I was very much surprised to see a strange young lady
riding this horse?” he said. “I know the horse and its owner--but--”
“Not the rider,” she finished his hesitating sentence. “Well, my name
is Molly Trueheart, and I borrowed the horse from old Betsy Bell over
there at the Laurens place. I will send him home in an hour. So, you
see, I’m not a horse thief, although I may look like a lunatic. To tell
the truth I’ve had quite a lark this evening, and I’m very anxious to
get home.”
“A lark!” he repeated, with an expressive shrug, and Molly Trueheart
uttered a merry, rollicking peal of laughter.
“Yes, a lark!” she said. “Oh, how horrified you look! Good-night, Mr.
Prig!” and like a flash she caught the reins from his hands, touched
Hero lightly with the whip, and he bounded gracefully away as if
anxious to atone for the mishap of awhile ago.
The stranger stood looking after her with a smile in his violet eyes.
“What a merry little hoiden!” he uttered aloud, “and what a mercy she
escaped unhurt. It was rather ludicrous to see her come flying over
Hero’s head in that fashion, and landing in the dust at one’s feet!”
Still smiling, he resumed his walk toward Maple Shade, as the Laurens
place was called, but before he reached the wide entrance gate of the
park he was overtaken by Hero, who, on being liberated at Ferndale, had
galloped rapidly back to overtake his friend.
“Good fellow!” said the gentleman, springing to the back of the
delighted creature, and continuing his journey. “I hope, Hero, you
have delivered our little madcap safe at home, and not flung her
precipitately at the head of some other astonished pedestrian!”
Hero gave a delighted whinny which his rider interpreted as the former,
which was indeed the case, for Molly Trueheart was at that moment
running across the lawn at Ferndale, anxious to make her peace with old
Mrs. Barry.
“I shall have to humble myself down to the ground, I know, but I’ll do
it for Louise’s sake,” she muttered then. “Oh, dear, how my bones do
ache! I know I’m all over black and blue from the tumbles I’ve had! I
know very well I shall be as sore as a boil tomorrow, and have to stay
in bed all day. Oh, what made Lou so determined on sending me here?
She might have known,” dismally, “that I could not behave myself. Oh,
Lordy, I do hope she’ll let me off from doing any more penance as soon
as she gets my letter!”
A sudden thought of the dignified stranger she had encountered made her
laugh aloud in spite of her sorry plight.
“My! what a prig he was! Handsome though, _very_!” she said. “I
wonder who he was, the wretch? He frightened the horse, of course,
or I shouldn’t have got that fall. I hope he doesn’t live in this
neighborhood, for it wouldn’t do for Aunt Thalia to find out that
I ran away. I must hold my peace on that point. And now to face the
music!”
The hall-doors stood wide open, the light of the swinging-lamp shining
on the tired, pretty face of the girl as she crept in and went softly
to the door of her aunt’s sitting-room. At the same moment the tall
Dutch clock in the hall loudly boomed out the hour of ten.
“Oh, I did not dream it was so late!” she muttered, and peeped around
the door.
There lay her Aunt Thalia on the sofa with Ginny Ann mopping her face
with camphor, and old Nancy Jane, the cook, swinging a huge turkey-wing
up and down.
Molly forgot her selfish terrors in anxiety for the old lady, and
rushed precipitately into the room.
“What’s the matter?” she exclaimed.
Nancy Jane and Ginny Ann squealed simultaneously:
“Lordy, Miss Lou, dat you?”
“Yes, or what’s left of me after tumbling out of the tree.” Walking up
to her aunt’s side, then bending over her: “Aunt Thalia, are you sick?”
Mrs. Barry opened her eyes with a look of relief, but before she could
speak Ginny Ann broke in:
“Missis almost c’azy, finkin’ you done runned away. You sartinly did
gib us a skeer, chile! Ole mis’, she say jes’ now, ‘Run upsta’rs, Ginny
Ann, and let dat chile out o’ dat garret. Guess she sorry for her sass
now.’ And I went and foun’ dat windy wide open, and you gone. And ole
mis’ flew in _sech_ a rage, umph me, as you nebber saw, and mos’ went
inter de highstrikes.”
“Ginny Ann, hold your tongue, you old fool!” cried Mrs. Barry, sitting
upright, with a suddenness that made her domestics reel backward in
dismay. “Is that you, Louise? Where have you been, child, giving us
such a scare about you?”
Something like tenderness quivered through her voice despite its
acerbity, and cunning Molly took instant advantage of the situation.
She dropped theatrically upon her knees.
“Oh, Aunt Thalia, the big rats in the garret frightened me almost to
death!” she sobbed. “I climbed out of the window into the tree, and
then a big snake scared me, and I fell out of the tree down to the
ground, and--and--oh--most killed myself! And--and--it just served me
right, too! I ought to have been killed for my meanness to you, Aunt
Thalia! I was just as naughty as I could be, but I’m downright sorry,
and I’ll try never--or, ‘hardly ever’--to do it again. Won’t you please
forgive me?”
Mrs. Barry looked down keenly into the lifted face. It did look pale
and pathetic, and the big eyes were positively dewy. She put out her
long, withered hand, on which a priceless diamond sparkled, and gently
stroked the dark head.
“Louise, I don’t know but that I ought to beg _your_ pardon,” she said,
with a gentleness that was so rare in her it made the gaping negroes
stare. “I--I don’t exactly think I did right putting you in the old
garret. You--you might have been killed falling out of that tree! I
think we must forgive each other and do better in future.”
“Oh, thank you so much, Aunt Thalia!” Molly cried, jubilantly. She even
dared press a timid kiss on Mrs. Barry’s wrinkled cheek, she felt so
glad that, by eating humble pie, she had saved Louise.
“Are you bruised very much, my dear?” the old lady inquired,
sympathetically, and Molly responded lugubriously:
“Black and blue all over!”
Both the negro women groaned in concert at this statement, and Mrs.
Barry exclaimed:
“Oh, how dreadful to think of such a fall! It’s a mercy you were not
killed outright. I forgot about the rats in the garret, or I never
would have shut you up there. Ginny Ann, you go upstairs with the
child, and let her have a warm bath, then rub her from head to foot in
arnica--from _head_ to _foot_; do you hear?”
“Yes, ole mis’, sartinly. Come on, Miss Lou, honey.”
“Yes, Ginny Ann. Good-night, Aunt Thalia. I’m sorry I gave you such
a scare; and I’m so glad that you were good enough to forgive me,”
Molly said, as she followed Ginny Ann from the room to the bath-room
upstairs, where the old lady’s instructions were carried out to the
letter.
“Oh, I feel so much better! Thank you, Ginny Ann,” she exclaimed, as
the latter tucked her into her cool, white bed. “But I’m sorry to be so
much trouble.”
“No trouble at tall, Miss Lou. I’se always been use to waiting on
de Barrys. It’s my pleasure and my dooty,” Ginny Ann replied, with
the elaborate politeness of the well-raised Virginia negro. Then she
paused, and said, mysteriously: “Honey, doane you mine ole missis’
capers; her bark worser ’n her bite. She gwine make it up to you fo’
treatin’ you so bad.”
“Make it up to me?” said tired and sleepy Molly, drowsily; and then
Ginny Ann got down on her knees by the bed and whispered the secret of
the evening’s work among the trunks of finery, and of the maid’s trip
into town for the summer silk.
“Lay low, honey, and doane say a word to ole missis, but sho’ as you
born, she’s gwine take you off on a trip whar you’ll hab a fine time
dancin’ and eberyt’ing; and I shouldn’t wonder, no, I shouldn’t, ef she
marries you off to some nice young gemplum,” she concluded, exuberantly.
Molly’s head popped up from the pillow like a cork.
“Indeed she won’t then! Marry me off, indeed! I should like to see any
one try it!” she blazed, indignantly.
“Hi, honey, doane you want get married?” Ginny Ann inquired, in
amazement.
“No, I don’t! I hate men, every one of them--deceitful _prigs_!” cried
Molly, violently, adding to herself that the man she had seen tonight
she hated worst of all.
Wanting to get rid of Ginny Ann, she put down her head again,
pretending to snore audibly, and the woman retired, muttering to
herself:
“Dat’s de strangest young gal I eber did see! Doane wanter git married,
she say! Well, Lordy! she sartinly is diff’runt from any oder young gal
in de worl’!”