But here a faint knock on the door leading into the hall checked his
inquiry. He opened it sharply in his excitement, and was embarrassed
to find the daughter of his hostess standing there, shy, startled, and
evidently equally embarrassed by his abrupt response.
"Mother only wanted me to ask you if Ellen had put everything to
rights," she said, making a step backwards.
"Oh, thank you. Perfectly," said Herbert with effusion. "Nothing
could be better done. In fact"--
"You're quite sure she hasn't forgotten anything? or that there isn't
anything you would like changed?" she continued, with her eyes leveled
on the floor.
"Nothing, I assure you," he said, looking at her downcast lashes. As
she still remained motionless, he continued cheerfully, "Would
you--would you--care to look round and see?"
"No; I thank you."
There was an awkward pause. He still continued to hold the door open.
Suddenly she moved forward with a school-girl stride, entered the room,
and going to the harmonium, sat down upon the music-stool beside it,
slightly bending forward, with one long, slim, white hand on top of the
other, resting over her crossed knees.
Herbert was a little puzzled. It was the awkward and brusque act of a
very young person, and yet nothing now could be more gentle and
self-composed than her figure and attitude.
"Yes," he continued, smilingly; "I am only afraid that I may not be
able to live quite up to the neatness and regularity of the example I
find here everywhere. You know I am dreadfully careless and not at all
orderly. I shudder to think what may happen; but you and your mother,
Miss Brooks, I trust, will make up your minds to overlook and forgive a
good deal. I shall do my best to be worthy of Mr. Tap--of my
predecessor--but even then I am afraid you'll find me a great bother."
She raised her shy eyelids. The faintest ghost of a long-buried dimple
came into her pale cheek as she said softly, to his utter consternation:
"Rats!"
Had she uttered an oath he could not have been more startled than he
was by this choice gem of Western saloon-slang from the pure lips of
this Evangeline-like figure before him. He sat gazing at her with a
wild hysteric desire to laugh. She lifted her eyes again, swept him
with a slightly terrified glance, and said:
"Tap says you all say that when any one makes-believe politeness to
you."
"Oh, your BROTHER says that, does he?" said Herbert, laughing.
"Yes, and sometimes 'Old rats.' But," she continued hurriedly, "HE
doesn't say it; he says YOU all do. My brother is very particular, and
very good. Doctor Stout loves him. He is thought very much of in all
Christian circles. That book-mark was given to him by one of his
classes."
Every trace of her dimples had vanished. She looked so sweetly grave,
and withal so maidenly, sitting there slightly smoothing the lengths of
her pink fingers, that Herbert was somewhat embarrassed.
"But I assure you, Miss Brooks, I was not making-believe. I am really
very careless, and everything is so proper--I mean so neat and
pretty--here, that I"--he stopped, and, observing the same backward
wandering of her eye as of a filly about to shy, quickly changed the
subject. "You have, or are about to have, neighbors?" he said,
glancing towards the windows as he recalled the incident of a moment
before.
"Yes; and they're not at all nice people. They are from Pike County,
and very queer. They came across the plains in '50. They say
'Stranger'; the men are vulgar, and the girls very forward. Tap forbids
my ever going to the window and looking at them. They're quite what you
would call 'off color.'"
Herbert, who did not dare to say that he never would have dreamed of
using such an expression in any young girl's presence, was plunged in
silent consternation.
"Then your brother doesn't approve of them?" he said, at last,
awkwardly.
"Oh, not at all. He even talked of having ground-glass put in all
these windows, only it would make the light bad."
Herbert felt very embarrassed. If the mysterious missile came from
these objectionable young persons, it was evidently because they
thought they had detected a more accessible and sympathizing individual
in the stranger who now occupied the room. He concluded he had better
not say anything about it.
Miss Brooks's golden eyelashes were bent towards the floor. "Do you
play sacred music, Mr. Bly?" she said, without raising them.
"I am afraid not."
"Perhaps you know only negro-minstrel songs?"
"I am afraid--yes."
"I know one." The dimples faintly came back again. "It's called 'The
Ham-fat Man.' Some day when mother isn't in I'll play it for you."
Then the dimples fled again, and she immediately looked so distressed
that Herbert came to her assistance.
"I suppose your brother taught you that too?"
"Oh dear, no!" she returned, with her frightened glance; "I only heard
him say some people preferred that kind of thing to sacred music, and
one day I saw a copy of it in a music-store window in Clay Street, and
bought it. Oh no! Tappington didn't teach it to me."
In the pleasant discovery that she was at times independent of her
brother's perfections, Herbert smiled, and sympathetically drew a step
nearer to her. She rose at once, somewhat primly holding back the
sides of her skirt, school-girl fashion, with thumb and finger, and her
eyes cast down.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Bly."
"Must you go? Good afternoon."
She walked directly to the open door, looking very tall and stately as
she did so, but without turning towards him. When she reached it she
lifted her eyes; there was the slightest suggestion of a return of her
dimples in the relaxation of her grave little mouth. Then she said,
"good-bye, Mr. Bly," and departed.
The skirt of her dress rustled for an instant in the passage. Herbert
looked after her. "I wonder if she skipped then--she looks like a girl
that might skip at such a time," he said to himself. "How very odd she
is--and how simple! But I must pull her up in that slang when I know
her better. Fancy her brother telling her THAT! What a pair they must
be!" Nevertheless, when he turned back into the room again he forbore
going to the window to indulge further curiosity in regard to his
wicked neighbors. A certain new feeling of respect to his late
companion--and possibly to himself--held him in check. Much as he
resented Tappington's perfections, he resented quite as warmly the
presumption that he was not quite as perfect, which was implied in that
mysterious overture. He glanced at the stool on which she had been
sitting with a half-brotherly smile, and put it reverently on one side
with a very vivid recollection of her shy maidenly figure. In some
mysterious way too the room seemed to have lost its formal strangeness;
perhaps it was the touch of individuality--HERS--that had been wanting?
He began thoughtfully to dress himself for his regular dinner at the
Poodle Dog Restaurant, and when he left the room he turned back to look
once more at the stool where she had sat. Even on his way to that fast
and famous cafe of the period he felt, for the first time in his
thoughtless but lonely life, the gentle security of the home he had
left behind him.