LITMIR.BIZ

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I meant any thing but praise?"

      "I thought I was so big and clumsy, that you must be making fun of me."

      "Oh, no! I was only thinking what a mere morsel Flossy looked beside you at the picnic."

      He blushed, and pulled at his hat, after his usual awkward fashion; and at that moment, as if summoned by a call-boy for her part in the play, Flossy herself appeared in the doorway, bowl of pop-corn, and all.

      "Good-morning, Mr. Blood," she said. "Can you tell why mutton always tastes catty? As if it were cats, I mean."

      "I – I never tasted any cats," he said with the utmost earnestness.

      "No? Well, I wouldn't. But why didn't you come to inquire how I felt after the picnic? Montfield manners and bonnets both need to be issued in a revised edition."

      "Montfield manners are perfect," Patty said, coming to the rescue of the guest. "They cannot be improved. But you remember, Flossy, what you had to ask Burleigh."

      "Of course you understand, Mr. Blood," Flossy said, "that a lady's request is a command."

      "Yes, certainly."

      "Very well. It is this I spoke to you about the other day, you know."

      "I don't remember what you mean."

      "You are to be my lover in this play."

      "What?"

      "You don't look over-charmed at the prospect," Flossy remarked coolly. "You ought to feel honored. So saying, I will eat a few kernels of corn. Have some, Patty?"

      "But of course I can't act."

      "Of course you can. I'll get the book for you now, so you can be studying your part. We don't have rehearsal until next week."

      "You are to be Jonathan Cowboy in the play," Flossy continued, having produced the book. "Will is Mr. Bramble, and Ease Apthorpe his daughter. I'm to be Waitstill Eastman. I chose that because she has things to eat."

      "Shall you eat pop-corn?" asked Patty.

      "Really, I couldn't think of taking a part," Burleigh said.

      "Nobody wants you to think of it," Flossy returned placidly. "It is settled that you are to have it. It is a bashful part, and, if you make any mistakes, people will think it is part of the play."

      "'Vanity of vanities,'" said the voice of Bathalina Clemens, who had approached unperceived. "'All is vanity.'"

      "So are you," Flossy retorted.

      "How came you home so soon?" Patty asked. "Didn't they have the funeral?"

      "No," the doleful servant answered. "Emma ain't dead: so they had to put it off. Jane concluded to do her churning, after all; but she says she's in hopes to get through the burying by next Wednesday. And I should think she'd want to; for that'll finish up all the first wife's children. It'll naturally give her more time to look after her own."

      "Did you ever hear any thing so atrocious!" exclaimed Patty, as the maid-servant disappeared round the corner of the house. "The way she talks about that funeral is more crazy than her usual speeches, and that is certainly needless."

      "Don't names," Flossy asked pensively, "always convey a color to your mind, Mr. Blood?"

      "Convey a color?"

      "Yes. Like Caroline, you know: that always makes me think of pale yellow, and Susan of red, and Mary of blue."

      "What nonsense!" laughed her cousin. "What color would Bathalina suggest?"

      "That name," said Flossy, "always calls up a grayish, dirty green, like faded linsey-woolsey."

      And at that moment the dinner-bell rang.

      CHAPTER X

      A CHANCE MEETING

      The Putnam mansion, wherein the lawyer's ancestors had lived and died for several generations, stood next to the cottage of Dr. Sanford; or rather the two places were back to back, each facing one of the two principal of the village streets. To reach either house from the more distant thoroughfare, a short cut was taken across the grounds of the other, right-of-way being conceded by mutual agreement.

      People in Montfield retired early; and thus it happened that at ten o'clock of the Friday night following the coming of grandmother Sanford the lights were out in the doctor's cottage, and sleep was supposed to have descended upon all the dwellers therein. Patty had not, however, retired. A thunder-storm was slowly rising out of the west, with golden fringes of lightning about its dark edges; and she sat at her open window to watch its progress. The unusual restraint imposed upon her by her lameness had made her restless; and she longed to steal out of the house, and run races across the orchard as she had done when a child. The sultry closeness of the night made her take a fan, with which she did little but tap impatiently upon the window-ledge. She was not thinking connectedly, but in a vague way unpleasant thoughts and feelings crowded tumultuously through her brain like the crew of Comus.

      Suddenly in the garden below she heard voices. A man was speaking earnestly, but in a tone too low to be audible at the window above. A woman answered him, the pair seeming to discuss something with much emphasis. Her curiosity greatly excited by so unusual a circumstance, Patty leaned out of the window to discover, if possible, who were the speakers.

      "Well, it's the Lord's will," she heard the woman's voice say. "And I, for one, ain't a-going to run a muck agin it."

      "It is Bathalina!" the listener said to herself. "Who in the world can she be talking to?"

      She leaned farther from her window, but by an unlucky movement of her arm sent her fan fluttering down to the gravel walk below. The speakers departed in different directions like phantoms, and Patty was left once again to her own reflections. At first she speculated upon the possible nature of the interview she had interrupted; then her thoughts came back to her fan. It chanced to be one painted by an artist-cousin, and one of which she was fond: a thunder-storm was rapidly approaching, and the fan likely to be ruined. Her ankle was fast recovering, and she was not long in determining to go down into the garden for her property. With the aid of the furniture and the stair-railings she got safely down to the side-door, cautiously unbolted it and slipped out. The fan was only a few steps from the door, but a rolling-stone lay in wait for the lame ankle, and gave it so severe a turn that Patty sank down a miserable heap upon the ground. She sat there a moment to recover herself, and then crawled back to the door-steps. Seated here, she gazed ruefully at the fan, a white spot upon the dusky walk, and, coddling her aching ankle in her hands, wondered how she was to regain her room.

      At that moment brisk steps sounded on the walk, approaching the spot where she sat. A tall form defined itself amid the darkness, pausing before her.

      "Good-evening," said the voice of Tom Putnam. "Is it you, Patty?"

      "Yes. It is I."

      "Would it be polite to ask if you walk in your sleep?"

      "I can't walk awake at any rate," she replied, half laughing and half crying, "whatever I may do in my sleep."

      "Then, you must have come here for air in your dreams."

      "I came after that fan, and I've twisted my foot over again."

      He restored the fan, and then seated himself at her feet on the lowest step.

      "It is fortunate I took this way home," he said coolly. "I hear that you think I am miserly."

      "What?" she exclaimed in surprise.

      "I am told that you pronounce me miserly," he repeated. "I am very sorry, for I mean to ask you to be my wife."

      Instead of answering this strange declaration, Patty covered her face with her hands and burst into tears. He laid his fingers lightly upon her hair, smoothing it with a caressing motion. Surprise, physical pain, anger, and love were all oddly mingled in Patty's mind. She knew that she loved this man, and she was bitterly angry with herself for having misjudged him. She was no less angry with him for knowing the latter fact, of which Emily Purdy had taken care that he should not remain ignorant. She had, too, that Amazonian repugnance to the caress of a lover which is often inborn in strong personalities. She shook

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