THE WOUNDS OF A FRIEND.
The plan which Mrs. Toxteth had once mentioned to Ease, of having a
masquerade follow the exhibition, had not been forgotten; and the
invitations had accordingly been issued. It was arranged that the
actors should meet on the morning following the theatricals, and make
some arrangement for the exchange of costumes. About ten o'clock Patty,
Flossy, and Will walked over to the Hall together.
"I feel like the ashes of yesterday's cigar slopped with the dregs of
last night's champagne," yawned Will, with some reminiscence of wicked
college frolics.
"And I," Flossy said, "feel like this man, you know, that"--
"No, I don't know," he interrupted. "I never know 'this man,' Floss;
but I'm sorry you feel like him."
"If you'd kept still, you might have found out who he was; but now
you'll never know."
"Oh, tell us!"
"No, I shall not. 'Twasn't that other, you know, either."
Flossy's "this man," or "that other, you know," were as famous in her
particular circle as Sairy Gamp's "Mrs. Harris, my dear," in a more
general one. These allusions were seldom intelligible, and it is to be
suspected that sometimes the little witch made them purposely obscure
for her own amusement.
The company assembled in the Hall was rather a sleepy one, with
scarcely energy enough for discussion. The talk naturally ran chiefly
upon the performance, the various haps and mishaps, the successes and
failures, the money obtained. Patty and Tom Putnam chanced to stand
near each other, and a little apart from the others. She had taken a
slight cold from her exposure upon the piazza the night before, and was
coughing.
"I am very sorry you've taken cold," the lawyer said.
"It is nothing," she returned.
"But every time you cough," he said with mock-pathos, "one of my
heart-strings snaps."
"I should think they'd be about all used up by this time, then."
"Oh! I tie them up again, after the fashion of guitar-strings."
"But a tied-up string cannot give a good sound."
"No," he laughed, "only a kind of melancholy 'bong.' But one gets
accustomed to any thing."
"It is a pity," she said, "that these mortal frames cannot be made
with less rigging. Think how much simpler it would be to grow like a
crystal, without all 'the bother of all the fixin's inside on us,' as
Bathalina says."
"But a crystal must have a rather cold existence," he returned. "I
prefer our present condition, thank you."
"Patty Sanford," called Dessie Farnam, "do come and tell us how to
distribute these costumes!"
"It seems to me," Patience answered, "that the simplest way is to lay
all the dresses out in one of the rooms, and draw lots for choice. Then
each person can go and choose, and nobody be the wiser."
"I think that is best," Clarence Toxteth assented. "I wonder we didn't
think of it. You remember our bet?"
"Oh, yes!" Patty replied. "I am as sure of those gloves as if I had
them now."
Toxteth had somewhere seen or heard of the fashion of betting gloves;
and the custom seemed to him the acme of high-bred gallantry. He had
accordingly bet with Patty that he should be able to penetrate her
disguise at the masquerade. She was determined to win this wager, and
had already settled in her mind the costume she should, if possible,
secure.
Some time was occupied in laying out the dresses, and then the lots
were drawn from a hat. The first choice fell to Patty, and the second
to Emily Purdy; Ease had the third, and Putnam the fourth.
"Now we shall see what we shall see," Patty said gayly. "I'm going to
try on all the suits, and take the most becoming."
She disappeared into the dressing-room, and after a few moments emerged
empty-handed.
"Where is your dress?" Emily Purdy asked.
"I put it into my trunk," was the reply. "It is all ready to take home
that way."
Miss Purdy was absent far longer than Patience had been; but a large
bundle in her arms furnished a ready excuse for the delay.
"If everybody is as long as this," Will said, "we that are at the
bottom of the list had best go home, and come over to-morrow. I'm the
fifteenth."
"I'm two worse than that," Burleigh Blood declared. "And between us,
Will, there isn't a suit there I can get into, but my own."
"Take any one," was the reply, "and then get up any thing you choose."
Putnam stood alone by a window when Emily Purdy returned, and she
advanced towards him.
"Oh!" she said in a confidential whisper, "how do you suppose Patty
could take Clarence Toxteth's suit?"
"So you've spent your time discovering what she chose," he said aloud.
"That was as kind of you as it was honorable."
"I couldn't help noticing, could I?" she stammered, abashed.
"No, probably not," he answered with quiet scorn.
"Of course I shouldn't tell anybody," she continued. "But it was so
strange of her!"
"She took it as a blind, I presume," he said, "and means to make a new
costume. Excuse me. It is my turn."
With much laughter and fun the selection continued until all the
dresses had been taken. Burleigh Blood confided to Flossy, that, when
his turn came, the only male costume remaining was that of little Tim
Bawlin, and that he had taken it.
"What on earth will you do?" she asked.
"I must get up something, but I am sure I don't know what."
"I'd be glad to help you," she said. "If I can, that is."
"Of course you can," he replied. "I shall depend upon you."
As Patty left the hall, she was joined by the lawyer.
"I am going to see your grandmother," he said. "This famous pension
business is about settled, and I wish to tell her."
"I am glad if it has at last come to something," she returned. "I
doubted if it ever would."
"I want to ask a favor of you," he said as they gained the street.
"What is it?"
"I had the misfortune," he said slowly, "to be forced to take for
myself the dress Dessie Farnum wore last night. It is evident enough
that I cannot wear it, and I want to change for the one you have."
"What do you mean?" she asked in astonishment.
"As I say."
"How do you know what dress I have?"
"What does that signify, since I do know?"
"It signifies a great deal. I never thought you so dishonorable as to
play the spy."
"Do you think me so now?"
"What else can I think?" she demanded hotly.
"As you please: let the insult pass," he said. "The main thing is that
you exchange with me."
"I will not exchange with you!"
"You will not?"
"No."
"But, Patty, just consider the talk and the scandal it will make if you
wear a man's dress, to say nothing of the indelicacy."
"Indelicacy! Thanks! We are quits on the score of insults."
The costume Patty had chosen was an old-fashioned dress-suit, with
knee-breeches and swallow-tailed coat. In selecting it, she had only
considered how perfectly it would answer as a disguise, and had acted
upon the impulse of the moment.
"It was not like a public mask," she had said to herself, "but a small
party of intimate friends." The words of the lawyer set the matter in
wholly a new light before her. She tried to feel that all her anger was
against him, but was secretly conscious of the imprudence of the thing
she had planned to do. The fact that he was right, and yet wrong by not
considering the innocence of her intentions, incensed the girl the more.
"I do not see that you have the right to be my mentor in any case,"
she exclaimed. "But nothing seems to make you so happy as to see me
miserable. Why must you be prying about to discover what dress I mean
to wear at all? One would expect you to be sufficiently ashamed of
that to keep from betraying yourself. But no: you cannot let slip
an opportunity of correcting me, even at the expense of smirching
yourself. Oh, and this is the love you professed for me!"
"Patty," he said quietly, as she paused to choke back the sobs which
strangled her, "will you be kind enough to tell me what all this is
about?"
"About? As if you did not"--
"I beg pardon," he interrupted. "I was not done. Is it, then, proof of
a want of love that I hurt myself to save you from a foolish thing you
will not be willing to do when you come to think of it, and of which
you would be ashamed if you did it thoughtlessly?"
"Hurt yourself!" she returned scornfully. "It may hurt you: I do not
know. But you cannot wonder if I find it a little hard to believe. But
you do not seem to consider whether it hurts me, or not."
"Why should it hurt you to do me a favor, and exchange costumes?"
"The fact that you know what costume I have hurts me. I do not enjoy
finding I have been deceived in my friends."
"The faith you have in your friends cannot be very robust to be so
easily shaken."
"Thank you again. I am unfortunately accustomed to believe my senses."
"As you please," he said coldly, holding open the gate for her to
enter. "But you have not answered my question."
"What question?"
"Will you do me the favor of exchanging dresses with me?"
"I have answered that."
"But you must reconsider."
"Must!" she flashed out,--"must! You have no right to say _must_ to me,
thank Heaven! and you never will have!"
"You will say it to yourself in this case," he said, pale and
self-contained.
"If I do, I shall not need your interference."
She turned her back upon him, and walked between the leafless shrubs
towards the house, setting her heels determinedly upon the walk. It
was not until she had entered the door that she remembered his errand
to her grandmother; and by that time he had taken the path across the
orchard to his home.
"I have done it now," he muttered to himself. "The society of women
will make a fool of the most sensible of men. But what an ass I was to
set to work so clumsily! I wish Emily Purdy were in Tophet!"