Quaint Courtships Part 10

"'An' will you keep out o' the galley?' "'I 'low I'll _have_ to.'

"'An', look you! cook, is you sure--is you _sure_,' says the skipper, with a shudder, lookin' at the roof, 'that you wants t' marry this here--'

"'Don't you do it, skipper!' says the cook. 'Don't you say that no more!

By G.o.d!' says he, 'I'll kill you if you does!'

"'Is you sure,' says the skipper, 'that you wants t' marry this here--woman?'

"'I will.'

"'Well,' says the skipper, kissin' the Book, 'I'low me an' the crew don't care; an' we can't help it, anyhow.'

"'What about mother's ring?' says the cook. 'She might's well have that,' says he, 'if she's careful about the wear an' tear. For joolery,'

says he t' Liz, 'don't stand it.'

"'It can't do no harm,' says the skipper.

"'Ith we married, thkipper?' says Liz, when she got the ring on.

"'Well,' says the skipper, 'I 'low that knot 'll hold 'til fall. For,'

says he, 'I got a rope's end an' a belayin'-pin t' make it hold,' says he, 'til we gets long-side of a parson that knows more about matrimonial knots 'n me. We'll pick up your goods. Liz,' says he, 'on the s'uthard v'y'ge. An' I hopes, ol girl,' says he, 'that you'll be able t' boil the water 'ithout burnin' it.'

"'Ay, Liz. I been makin' a awful fist o' b'ilin' the water o' late.'

"She gave him one look--an' put her clean pinny to her eyes.

"'What you cryin' about?' says the cook.

"'I don't know,' says she; 'but I 'low 't.i.th becauthe now I knowth you _ith_ a fool!'

"'She's right, Tumm,' says the cook. 'She's got it right! Bein' born on Hollow eve,' says he, 'I couldn't be nothin' else. But, Liz,' says he, 'I'm glad I got you, fool or no fool.'

"So she wiped her eyes, an' blowed her nose, an' give a little sniff, an' looked up, an' smiled.

"'I isn't good enough for you,' says the poor cook. 'But, Liz,' says he, 'if you kissed me,' says he, 'I wouldn't mind a bit. An' they isn't a man in this here fo'c's'le,' says he, lookin' around, 'that'll _say_ I'd mind. Not one,' says he, with the little devil jumpin' in his eyes.

"Then she stopped cryin' for good.

"'Go ahead, Liz!' says he. 'I ain't afeared. Come on! Give us a kiss!'

"'Motheth Thooth,' says she, 'you're the firtht man ever athked me t'

give un a kith!'

"She kissed un. 'Twas like a pistol-shot. An', Lord! her poor face was s.h.i.+nin'...."

In the forecastle of the _Good Samaritan_ we listened to the wind as it scampered over the deck; and we watched Tumm pick at the knot in the table.

"Was she happy?" I asked, at last.

"Well," he answered, with a laugh, "she sort o' got what she was wantin'. More'n she was lookin' for, I 'low. Seven o' them. An' all straight an' hearty. Ecod! sir, you never _seed_ such a likely litter o'

young uns. Spick an' span, ecod! from stem t' stern. Smellin' clean an'

sweet; decks as white as snow; an' every nail an' k.n.o.b polished 'til it made you blink t' see it. An' when I was down Thunder Arm way, last season, they was some talk _o' one o' them bein' raised for a parson!_"

I went on deck. The night was still black; but beyond--high over the open sea, hung in the depths of the mystery of night and s.p.a.ce--there was a star.

HYACINTHUS

BY MARY E. WILKINS FREEMAN

The group was seated on the flat door-stone and the gravel walk in front of it, which crossed the green square of the Lynn front yard. On the wide flat stone, in two chairs, sat Mrs. Rufus Lynn and her opposite neighbor, Mrs. Wilford Biggs. On a chair on the gravel walk sat Mr. John Mangam, Mrs. Biggs's brother--an elderly unmarried man who lived in the village. On the step itself sat Mrs. Samson, an old lady of eighty-five, as straight as if she were sixteen, and by her side, her long body bent gracefully, her elbows resting on her knees, her chin resting in the cup of her two hands, Sarah Lynn, her great-granddaughter. Sarah Lynn was often spoken of as "pretty if she wasn't so slouchy," in Adams, the village in which she had been born and bred. Adams people were not, generally speaking, of the kind who understand the grace which may exist in utter freedom of att.i.tude and motion.

It was a very hot evening of one of the hottest days of July, and Mrs.

Rufus Lynn wore in deference to the climate a gown of white cambric with a little black sprig thereon, but nothing could excel the smoothly boned fit of it. And she did not lean back in her chair, but was as erect as the very old lady on the door-step, who was her grandmother, and who was also stiffly gowned, in a black cashmere as straightly made as if it had been armor. The influence of heredity showed strongly in the two, but in Sarah showed the intervening generation.

Sarah was a great beauty with no honor in her own country. Her long softly curved figure was surmounted by a head wound with braids of the purest flax color, and a face like a cameo. She was very fair, with the fairness of alabaster. Her mother's face had a hard blondness, pink and white, but fixed, and her great-grandmother had the same.

Mrs. Samson often glanced disapprovingly at her great-granddaughter, seated by her side in her utterly lax att.i.tude. "Don't set so hunched up," she whispered to her in a sharp hiss. She did not want Mr. John Mangam, whom she regarded as a suitor of Sarah's, to have his attention called to the girl's defects.

But Sarah had laughed softly, and replied, quite aloud, in a languid, sweet voice, "Oh, it is so hot, grandma!"

"What if it is hot?" said the old woman. "You ain't no hotter settin' up than you be slouchin'." She still spoke in a whisper, and Sarah had only laughed and said nothing more.

As for Mrs. Wilford Biggs and her brother, Mr. John Mangam, they maintained, as always, silence. Neither of the two ever spoke, as a rule, unless spoken to. John was called a very rich man in Adams. He had gone to the far West in his youth and made money in cattle.

"And how in creation he ever made any money in cattle, a man that don't talk no more than he does, beats me," Mrs. Samson often said to her granddaughter, Mrs. Lynn. She was quite out-spoken to her about John Mangam, although never to Sarah. "It does seem as if a man would have to say somethin', to manage critters," said the old woman.

Mr. John Mangam and Mrs. Wilford Biggs grated on her nerves. She privately considered it an outrage for Mrs. Biggs to come over nearly every evening and sit and rock and say nothing, and often fall asleep, and for Mr. Mangam to do the same. It was not so much the silence as the att.i.tude of almost injured expectancy which irritated. Both gave the effect of waiting for other people to talk to them, to tell them interesting bits of news, to ask them questions--to set them going, as it were.

Mrs. Lynn and her grandmother tried to fulfil their duty in this direction, but Sarah did not trouble herself in the least. She continued to sit bent over like a lily limp with the heat, and she stared with her two great blue eyes in her cameo face forth at the wonders of the summer night, and she had apparently very little consciousness of the people around her. Her loose white gown fell loosely around her; her white elbows were quite visible from the position in which she held her arms.

Her lovely hair hung in soft loops over her ears. She was the only one who paid the slightest attention to the beauty of the night. She was filling her whole soul with it.

It was a wonderful night, and Adams was a village in which to see a wonderful night. It was flanked by a river, upon the opposite bank of which rose a gentle mountain. Above the mountain the moon was appearing with the beauty of revelation, and the tall trees made superb shadow effects. The night also was not without its voices and its fragrances.

Katydids were shrilling from every thicket, and over somewhere near the river a whippoorwill was persistently calling. As for the fragrances, they were those of the dark, damp skirts and wings of the night, the evidences as loud as voices of green shrubs and flowers blooming in low wet places; but dominant above all was the scent of the lilies. One breathed in lilies to that extent that one's thought seemed fairly scented with them. It was easy enough, by looking toward the left, to see where the fragrance came from. There was evident, on the other side of a low hedge, a pale florescence of the flowers. Beyond them rose, pale likewise, the great Ware house, the largest in the village, and the oldest. Hyacinthus Ware was the sole representative of the old family known to be living. Presently the group on the Lynn door-step began to talk about him, leading up to the subject from the fragrance of the lilies.

"Them lilies is so sweet they are sickish," said the old grandmother.

"Yes, they be dreadful sickish," said Mrs. Lynn. Mrs. Wilford Biggs and Mr. Mangam, as usual, said nothing.

"Hyacinthus is home, I see," said Mrs. Lynn.

"Yes, I see him on the street t'other day," said the old woman, in her thick dialect. She sat straighter than ever as she gazed across at the garden of lilies and the great Ware house, and the cold step-stone seemed to pierce her old spinal column like a rod of steel; but she never flinched.

Mrs. Wilford Biggs and Mr. John Mangam said nothing.