The Wit and Humor of America Volume V Part 22

_Now_ what should he say? With any ordinary girl he could have found the answer, but this one had him floored.

"But you look ever so much nicer when you are awake," she further informed him, with a clear-eyed straightforwardness that was worse than disconcerting. In desperation he answered, with her own frankness, that she was nice looking herself. He meant it, too.

"I'm so glad you think so," she contentedly sighed. "I just knew we should like each other as soon as I saw you lying there asleep."

It was he who blushed, not the girl.

She partly raised up to recapture her hazel branch, and when she sat down again her shoulder remained lightly touching his arm. An electric thrill ran through him and tingled out at his fingertips, but he never moved a muscle. She looked up at him in peaceful happiness and he somehow felt very mean and unworthy. Her eyes made him uncomfortable.

The whole trouble was that she was so honest--had never been taught to conceal her thoughts by the thousand and one spoken and unspoken lies of ordinary social intercourse. She was neither timid nor bold, but merely natural, with never a suspicion that conventionality demanded a man and a maid to leave a mutual liking unconfessed. It was rather rough on the young man. He was not used to having the truth fly around in such reckless fas.h.i.+on in his conversations with girls, and it bothered him.

"I'm not a bit afraid of you," she presently told him. "I knew all the time that Aunt Mattie was wrong. She told me that all men were dreadful, and that the first thing they did was to--to kiss a girl they liked."

"She knows nothing about it," he replied rather crossly. For some unaccountable reason he was angry with himself and with her.

"Indeed, she doesn't," she agreed, eying him thoughtfully. Presently she added: "I do not believe, though, that I should have minded it so much if she had been right."

Shade of Plato! He looked down at the tempting curve of her red lips.

They were round and full and soft as the petals of a half-blown rosebud, warm and tender and sweet, with just the least trace of puckering to indicate how they could meet the pressure of other lips. He felt his heart come pounding up into the region of his Adam's apple, and he trembled as he had not done since his first attack of puppy love at the age of fourteen. His breath came and went with a painful flutter but he made no movement. If it had been any sort of a girl under the sun, especially if so attractive as this one, she would have been kissed until she gasped for breath; but he just couldn't do it. However, if she went so far as to _ask_ him to kiss her, _by George_! he didn't see how he was to get out of it!

"I should really like to kiss you," he admitted with a martyr-like sigh and a further echo of her own frankness, "but I shan't. Under the circ.u.mstances it would not be right."

He reflected, grinning, that mother would be proud if she could see him now, then he thought, grinning harder, of the boys at the club. If _they_ only knew!

"There, didn't I say so!" she triumphantly exclaimed. "I told Aunt Matilda that there certainly must be _some_ good men in the world!"

Good! He winced as certain memories of his careless youth began to do cake-walks up and down his conscience. Then he changed the subject.

She snuggled up closely to him, by and by, confidingly and unsuspicious, and just talked and talked and talked. It was very pleasant to have her there at his side, babbling innocently away in that sweet, musical voice. How pretty she was, how artless and trusting, how honest and how heart-whole! It came to him that his family and friends had for a long time been telling him that he ought to get married, and he began to see that they were right.

How delightful it would be to stay on forever in this enchanted grove with her. He presently found himself fervently saying it, though he had not intended such words to pa.s.s his lips. She took the wish as a matter of course. She had confidently expected him to feel that way about it, and, if he felt that way, to say so.

"Adnah Eggleson!"

They jumped like juvenile jam-thieves caught red-handed.

Aunt Sarah and Aunt Ann and Aunt Matilda rigidly confronted them, having stolen upon them unseen, unheard, unthought of, and they stood now in grim horror, merciless and implacable. They advanced in a swooping body, after one moment of agonizing suspense, and s.n.a.t.c.hed Adnah into their midst, glaring three kinds of loathing scorn upon the interloping serpent.

"Has this person _kissed_ you, or attempted to do so?" hissed Aunt Sarah.

"Not yet," meekly answered poor Adnah.

"I a.s.sure you ladies--," began the serpent, but Aunt Sarah cut him short.

"Silence, sir!" she commanded. "We wish no explanations from you, whatsoever."

Thus crus.h.i.+ng him, the little company wheeled and marched away, bearing Adnah an unwilling and impenitent captive, two of them ingeniously keeping behind her so that she should have no opportunity of even exchanging a backward glance with the serpent.

Left to himself the serpent moodily kicked holes in the turf. He had an intense desire to do something violent--to smash something, no matter what. He was furious with the trio of aunts. It was a shame, he told himself, to bury alive a beautiful and n.o.ble young woman like that, through a warped and mistaken notion of the world. What right had they to condemn a sweet and affectionate creature such as she to a starved and morbid spinsterhood? It was his duty to rescue her from the colorless fate that hung over her, and he would do his duty. He was unconsciously flexing his biceps as he said it.

Would he? How? Should he get out a search warrant or a writ of replevin?

This whimsical view of the case only exasperated him the more as it presented the utter hopelessness of approaching her--of ever seeing her again--and, when the dogs came chasing an utterly inconsequential and useless b.u.t.terfly in his direction, he pelted them with stones until they yelped. Hang the dogs, anyhow. It was all their fault!

Next he blamed himself. If he had only resisted that creek like a man he wouldn't have been a hundred miles from home without clothes or money, and silly about a girl he had never seen until that day.

Then he blamed the girl. Why, _why_ was she such a confiding and altogether artless and bewitching little fool? She wasn't! He remembered her eyes and abjectly apologized to the memory of her. She was everything that was sweet and pure and womanly--everything that was desirable in every sense--well-bred, well-schooled, unspoiled of the world, without guile or subterfuge, beautiful, healthy, honest. That had been the only startling thing about her--just honesty. It spoke ill for himself and the world in which he lived that this should have seemed startling! What a wonderful creature she was! By the Eternal, she belonged to him and he meant to have her! She loved him, too!

He sat down on the bank to think over this phase of the question. He had known her several years in the minute and a half since noon, and it was time this foolishness came to an end.

Time flies when youth listens to the fancied strains of Mendelssohn's Spring Song. He was surprised, presently, to note a strange hush settling down over the woods. A chill vapor seemed to arise from the water. There was a melancholy note in the tweet of the low-flitting birds. The rustling trees softened their murmur to a continuous whisper, soothing and caressing. The tinkle of the creek became more metallic and p.r.o.nounced. Near by, down the stream, a sudden chorus of frogs burst into croaking, their isolated notes blended by the chirping undertone of the crickets and tree toads. There were other sounds, mysterious, untraceable, but all musical in greater or lesser degree.

He understood at last. These sounds, the rustling leaves, the flitting birds, the tinkling creek, the frogs, tree toads and crickets and those other intangible cadences, these were the instruments of nature's vast orchestra, playing their lullaby, languorous and sweet, for the drowsy day. It was dusk, and he was desperately in love with Adnah, and he had on a fool bloomer bath suit and no money, and he had to go back into civilization just as he was. Woe, woe, woe and anathema!

At the house he found a table set under a big oak tree back of the kitchen. Supper for one was illumined by the rays of a solitary lantern.

Aunt Sarah and Aunt Ann, each with a pistol in her lap, sat grimly to one side. Adnah nor Aunt Matilda were anywhere to be seen, and he divined with a thrill that Aunt Matilda was acting as jailer to the young woman until he should be safely off the premises. Evidently she had been hard to manage. Bless the little girl!

He took off his hat as he approached and bowed respectfully.

"I should like you to know who I am," he began.

"You will please to eat your supper without conversation," Aunt Sarah sternly interrupted.

"I wish to pay my addresses to your niece," he protested, but the two ladies, finding rudeness necessary, clasped their hands to their ears.

"Kindly eat," said Aunt Sarah, without removing her hands.

He sat down and glared at the food in despair. He thought he heard Adnah's voice and the sounds of a scuffle in the house, and it gave him inspiration. He arose, and, leaning his hands on the edge of the table, shouted as loudly as he could:

"I am John Melton, of Philadelphia. I will give you as many references as you like. I wish your permission to write to your niece and, later on, to call upon her. May I do so?"

"Are you going to eat your supper?" inquired Aunt Sarah.

He gave up. He could not, as a gentleman, take Aunt Sarah's hands from her ears and make her listen to what he had to say. He turned sadly away from the table. The armed escort also arose.

"Please lead the way," requested Aunt Sarah. "The path leads directly from the front of the cottage to the road."

He had stalked, in dismal silence, almost half way down the winding avenue of trees, moodily watching the gigantic shadows of his limbs leaping jerkily among the shrubbery, when it occurred to him that the women could scarcely carry the lantern and pistols and still hold their ears.

"I am John Melton, of Philadelphia," he shouted, and looked back to address them more directly. Alas, the pistols reposed in the pockets of the two prim ap.r.o.ns, the lantern smoked askew at Aunt Sarah's waist, and both women were holding their hands to their ears!

He could not know that they had been whispering about him, however, and really, for man-haters, their remarks had been very complimentary. Not even that ridiculous costume could hide his athletic figure, his good carriage and pleasant address.

They were nearing the road when they heard a woman's voice shrieking for them to wait, and presently Aunt Matilda came running after them, breathless and excited.

"You must come back to the house at once, all of you," she panted.

"Adnah is wildly hysterical. She insists that she must have this young man, monster or no monster--that she will die without him. I truly believe that she would!"

"Nonsense!" exclaimed Aunt Sarah. "Come on, then!"

It was Aunt Sarah who swiftly and anxiously led the way. At the door of the parlor she paused and confronted the young man.