July has dragged like a log across a wet field.
There was the Fourth, which is always the grandest occasion of the
year with us. Society has taken up Sylvia and rejected Georgiana;
and so with its great gallantry, and to her boundless delight,
Sylvia was invited to sit with a bevy of girls in a large furniture
wagon covered with flags and bunting. The girls were to be dressed
in white, carry flowers and flags, and sing "The Star-spangled
Banner" in the procession, just before the fire-engine. I wrote a
note to Georgiana, asking whether it would interfere with Sylvia's
Greatest Common Divisor if I presented her with a profusion of
elegant flowers on that occasion. Georgiana herself had equipped
Sylvia with a truly exquisite silken flag on a silver staff; and
as Sylvia both sang and waved with all her might, not only to keep
up the Green River reputation in such matters, but with a mediaeval
determination to attract a young man on the fire-engine behind,
she quite eclipsed every other miss in the wagon, and was not even
hoarse when persuaded at last to stop. So that several of the
representatives of the other States voted afterwards in a special
congress that she was loud, and in no way as nice as they had
fancied, and that they ought never to recognize her again except
in church and a funerals.
And then the month brought down from West Point the son of the
family, who cut _off_--or cut _at_--Georgiana's toes, I remember.
With him a sort of cousin, who lives in New York State; and after
a few days of toploftical strutting around town, and a pussillanimous
crack or two over the back-garden fence at my birds, they went away
again, to the home of this New York cousin, carrying Georgiana with
them to spend the summer.
Nothing has happened since. Only Sylvia and I have been making hay
while the sun shines--or does not shine, if one chooses to regard
Georgiana's absence in that cloudy fashion. Sylvia's ordinary armor
consists of a slate-pencil for a spear, a slate for a shield, and
a volume of Sir Walter for a battle-axe. Now and then I have found
her sitting alone in the arbor with the drooping air of Lucy Ashton
beside the fountain; and she would be better pleased if I met her
clandestinely there in cloak and plume with the deadly complexion
of Ravenswood.
The other day I caught her toiling at something, and she admitted
being at work on a poem which would be about half as long as the
"Lay of the Last Minstrel." She read me the opening lines, after
that bland habit of young writer; and as nearly as I recollect,
they began as follows:
"I love to have gardens, I love to have plants, I love to have
air, and I love to have ants."
When not under the spell of mediaeval chivalry she prattles needlessly
of Georgiana, early life, and their old home in Henderson. Although
I have pointed out to her the gross impropriety of her conduct, she
has persisted in reading me some of Georgiana's letters, written
from the home of that New York cousin, whose mother they are now
visiting. I didn't like _him_ particularly. Sylvia relates that
he was a favorite of her father's.
The dull month passes to-day. One thing I have secretly wished to
learn; did her brother cut Georgiana's toes entirely off?