"Just go out and look for the two girls, will you, Johnny. It's too late
for them to be out, though it is a warm night. Tell them I say they are
to come in at once," said Mrs. Cramp.
Not half a stone's throw from the house I found them--quarrelling. Their
noisy voices guided me. A brilliant moon lighted up the scene. The young
ladies were taunting one another; Juliet in frantic passion; Cherry in
sarcastic mockery. Fred Scott, after trying in vain to throw oil upon
the troubled waters, had given it up as hopeless, and stood leaning
against a tree in silent patience.
"It's quite true," Cherry was saying tauntingly when I got up. "We _are_
engaged. We shall be married shortly. Come!"
"You are not," raved Juliet, her voice trembling with the intense rage
she was in. "He was engaged to me before you came here; he is engaged to
me still."
Cherry laughed out in mockery. "Dear me! old maids do deceive themselves
so!"
Very hard, that, and Juliet winced. She was five or six years older than
the fairy. How Fred relished the bringing home to him of his sins, I
leave you to judge.
"I say, can't you have done with this, you silly girls?" he cried out
meekly.
"In a short time you'll have our wedding-cards," went on Cherry. "It's
all arranged. He's only waiting for me to decide whether it shall take
place here or at Gretna Green."
Juliet dashed round to face Fred Scott. "If this be true; if you do
behave in this false way to me, I'll not survive it," she said, hardly
able to bring the words out in her storm of passion. "Do you hear me?
I'll not live to see it, I say; and my ghost shall haunt her for her
whole life after."
"Come now, easy, Juliet," pleaded Fred uncomfortably. "It's all
nonsense, you know."
"I think it is; I think she is saying this to aggravate me," assented
Juliet, subsiding to a sort of calmness. "If not, take you warning,
Cherry Dawson, for I'll keep my word. My apparition shall haunt you for
ever and ever."
"It had better begin to-night, then, for you'll soon find out that it's
as true as gospel," retorted Cherry.
Managing at last to get in a word, I delivered Mrs. Cramp's message:
they were to come in instantly. Fred obeyed it with immense relief and
ran in before me. The two girls would follow, I concluded, when their
jarring had spent itself. The last glimpse I had of them, they were
stretching out their faces at each other like a couple of storks.
Juliet's straw hat had fallen from her head and was hanging by its
strings round her neck.
"Oh, they're coming," spoke up Fred, in answer to Mrs. Cramp. "It's very
nice out there; the moon's bright as day."
And presently I heard the laugh of Cherry Dawson amidst us. Her golden
hair, her scarlet cheeks and her blue eyes were all sparkling together.