Chapter VI: Part 6

"To be sure! What a head you have, sister Sophia," Miss Judy cried, admiringly. "And then we'll have something to send old Mr. Mills as well as Tom. Just to please Kitty," she added, seeing the shade which came over Miss Sophia's face, and misunderstanding its source. "It is ten to one but he will be in one of his tempers and throw the soup out of the window, as he did that dinner of Kitty's--dishes and all. But we can instruct Merica to hold on to the bowl till Kitty herself takes it from her. It always pleases Kitty so, for anybody to show the old man any little attention. And, after all, he is not so much to be blamed, poor old sufferer. Being bedfast with lumbago must be mighty trying to the temper. And then Sam, too, is threatened with a bad pain in his back every time he tries to do any work. It actually appears to come on if he even thinks about working, or if a body so much as mentions work before him. Maybe that's what makes Sam a bit irritable with the old man sometimes. But Kitty never is. All his crossness, all his unreasonableness, all his fault-finding--which is natural enough, poor old soul--just rolls off her good nature like water off a duck's back. She only laughs and pets him, and goes on trying harder then ever to please him. Did you ever see anybody like Kitty, sister Sophia?"

Miss Judy had arisen, gathering up her apron, which was filled with the pea-shells; but she now paused, holding the pan, to await Miss Sophia's reply with the greatest, keenest interest,--as she often did,--as though Miss Sophia, who had never been separated from her longer than two hours at a time in the whole course of their uneventful lives, might have known some peculiar and interesting persons, whom she herself had not been so fortunate as to meet. This was one of the things which made them such delightful company for one another. When, therefore, Miss Sophia now said, "Just so, sister Judy," with great promptness and decision, Miss Judy was newly impressed with the extent and soundness of her sister's knowledge of human nature.

Tripping briskly out of the room carrying the peas and the pea-shells (to which Miss Sophia had secretly transferred her expectation), she entered the kitchen, full of thoughts of the delicate cooking of the peas, and was surprised to find Merica missing. Yet the day was Monday, and the smoke from the invisible and mysterious wash-kettle floated up from a newly kindled fire behind the gooseberry bushes. Miss Judy did not know what to make of Merica's absence at such a time; and she stepped down from the rear door of the passage to the grass of the back yard and called. There was no answer, and Miss Judy stood hesitating a moment in puzzled astonishment, but as she turned there was a sudden rush--sounds of scuffling, a smothered shriek--and the girl fell over the fence, striking the ground with limbs outstretched, like some clumsy bird thrown while trying to fly. The fence, which divided Miss Judy's garden from old lady Gordon's orchard, was a very high one, but Miss Judy was more shocked than alarmed at seeing Merica come over it in so indecorous a manner.

"What does such conduct mean, Merica?" she said severely.

The girl had never heard her gentle mistress speak so sharply--but she herself was past mistress of deceit. She therefore gathered herself up as slowly as possible, in order to gain time, deliberately smoothing down her skirt and carefully brushing off the dirt. The mask of a dark skin has served in many an emergency. Merica could not entirely control the guilty shiftiness of her eyes, but she did it in a measure, and she was quite ready with a deceitful explanation almost as soon as she had recovered her breath. She knew from long experience how easy it was to deceive Miss Judy, the most innocent and artless of mistresses. She also knew--as all servants know the sources of their daily bread--the weak spot in Miss Judy's armor of innocence and artlessness. Accordingly, looking her mistress straight in the face, Merica now said brazenly that she had been over to old lady Gordon's to get the strange young gentleman's clothes; and Miss Judy, blushing rosy red, dropped the subject in the greatest haste and confusion, precisely as Merica expected her to do. The little lady was indeed so utterly routed that she gave the order for the steaming of the peas very timidly; and when Merica, seeing her advantage, followed it up in a most heartless manner by insisting upon boiling them instead, Miss Judy gave way without a struggle, and went silently back to the house as meek as any lamb.

She did not mention the matter to her sister; the delicate subject was, in fact, rarely mentioned between them, and it was, of course, never spoken of to any one else. To be sure, everybody in Oldfield had seen Merica coming and going with carefully covered baskets, which, nevertheless, proclaimed the laundry with every withe--as some baskets do, somehow or other, quite regardless of shape; but the fetching and the toting, as Merica phrased these transactions, were usually in the early morning when the neighbors were busy in the rear of their own houses; or in the dusk of evening when the gloaming cast its shadow of softening mystery over the most prosaic aspects of life. And everybody also saw the smoke arising every Monday morning from beneath the wash-kettle, hid in its bower of gooseberry bushes; but no one in all the village would have been unkind enough to ask or even to wonder, whether all the white bubbles arising with the steam could be portions of the two little ladies' own meagre wardrobe. It is true that on one occasion, when Sidney was very, very hard pressed for a new story,--as the most resourceful of professional diners-out must be now and again,--she had been overly tempted into the spinning of a weird and amusing yarn, about seeing a long, ghostly pair of white cotton legs, of unmistakably masculine ownership, flapping over the gooseberry bushes in a high wind as she went home after dark on a certain wild and stormy night. But she could hardly sleep on the following night, her uneasy conscience pricked her so sorely, and, setting out betimes the next morning, she made a round over the complete circuit of the previous day, unreservedly taking back the whole story. And never again did she yield to the never ceasing temptation to make capital of Miss Judy's little ways, about which, indeed, many a good story might have been excellently told.

That small gentlewoman herself, naturally, never dreamt of doing anything so indelicate as to look behind the gooseberry bushes while the clothes were in the tubs or the kettle or drying on the line. Sometimes, when she was compelled to send Merica away on an errand while the wash-kettle was boiling, she would take the girl's post temporarily and would punch the white bubbles gingerly with the clothes-stick to keep them from being burned against the side of the kettle; but she always blushed very much and was heartily glad when Merica returned to her duty. The simple truth was that Miss Judy thought it right to allow Merica, on her own proposal, to earn in this manner the wages which she and her sister were unable to pay, since they could give her but a nominal sum out of their little pension, which was all that they had. And yet, although this was the case, she saw no reason for talking about a disagreeable thing which she was thus forced to put up with. She never spoke of anything unrefined if she could help it. And those who knew her shrinking from all the more sordid sides of household affairs, and from all the commonplace and unbeautiful aspects of life, seldom if ever approached her with anything of the kind.

Far, indeed, then, would it have been from the rudest of the Oldfield people to have hinted to Miss Judy of certain matters which were plain enough to every one else. Miss Pettus alone thought Miss Judy ought to be told of Merica's scandalous "goings-on."

"I saw her and Eunice yesterday, in old lady Gordon's orchard, a-fighting over Enoch Cotton like two black cats--right under that poor little innocent's nose--and she never knowing a blessed thing about it!" Miss Pettus fumed.

But Sidney put her foot down. Miss Judy should not be told: and there was to be "no if or and" about it, either. "What's the use of worrying Miss Judy? She could no more understand than a baby in long clothes. And what's the odds, anyway?" demanded this village philosopher. "If they ain't a-fighting about Enoch Cotton they'll be a-fighting about somebody else."

Mrs. Alexander sided with Sidney. It would be a shame to tell Miss Judy; as Sidney said, it would be like going to a little child with such a tale; and the doctor's wife strengthened the impression made by her own opinion by saying that the doctor said Miss Judy must not be told. He simply would not allow it--that was all.

Kitty Mills, too, opposed the telling of Miss Judy earnestly enough, but she could not help laughing at the recollection of a scene which she had witnessed a few days before; and which she now went on to describe to the ladies who were holding this conclave.

"I happened to be raising the window of Father Mills's room,--he likes it down at night no matter how hot it is, and wants it raised and lowered all through the day,--and I saw Merica run out of Miss Judy's kitchen, and jump the back fence. She couldn't have more than 'lighted on the ground on the other side, when the air was filled all of a sudden with aprons and head-handkerchiefs--and smothered squalls. And bless your soul, there sat Miss Judy by the front window, knowing not a breath about what was going on over in the orchard--calm and sweet as any May morning and pretty as a pink--the dear little thing,--darning away on Miss Sophia's stocking, till you couldn't tell which was stocking and which was darn; and talking along in her chirrupy funny little way about that Becky (whoever she is), for all the world as if she were some real, live woman living that minute, right on the other side of the big road; and there was poor Miss Sophia a-listening, pleased as pleased could be, and mightily interested too, though it was plain to be seen that she had no more notion of what Miss Judy was talking about than the man in the moon;" and Kitty Mills took up her apron to wipe away the tears that had come from laughing over the picture thus conjured up.

Old lady Gordon did not enter into the conclave. She thought nothing about Miss Judy in connection with the rivalry between Eunice and Merica for the heart and hand of her black coachman, Mr. Enoch Cotton. Indeed, she thought nothing at all about the matter. In passing it seemed to her quite in the usual order of colored events. It had not up to that time touched her own comfort at any point. Eunice, knowing her mistress, was careful, even in the height of her jealous rages, even when she met Merica in the orchard by challenge to combat, to guard the excellence and the regularity of old lady Gordon's meals, thereby insuring against any interference from her.

"Just give Miss Frances her way and she'll give you your way, and that's more than you can say for most folks; lots of folks want their way and your way too, but Miss Frances don't."

Eunice had said this to Enoch, who was comparatively a newcomer, speaking in the picturesque dialect of her race, which is so agreeable to hear and so disagreeable to read. Having determined, as a mature widow knowing her own mind, to take Enoch Cotton unto herself for better or worse, it seemed to Eunice best to instruct him with regard to the keeping of his place as the gardener and the driver of the antiquated coach in which old lady Gordon, who never walked, fared forth at long and irregular intervals. This helpful instruction had been given before Merica's entrance into the field came cruelly to chill the confidence existing between Eunice and Enoch Cotton. It was during this completely confidential time that Eunice had also told him that it was entirely a mistake to suppose the mistress to be as hard to get along with as some people thought she was. The main thing, the only thing in fact, was to keep from crossing her comfort.

"_I_'ve got nothing to do but to cook what she wants cooked in the way she wants it cooked, with her batter cakes brown on both sides; and to be careful to have the meals on the table at the stroke of the clock. You've got nothing to do but to raise plenty of the vegetables she likes, and to have the coach 'round at the front gate to the minute by the watch. We won't have any trouble with Miss Frances so long as we do what she wants and don't cross her comfort. If you ever do cross it--even one time--then look out!"

Eunice had eloquently concluded these valuable hints, silently nodding her head, with her blue-palmed black hands on her broad hips. And Enoch Cotton--alas! learned his lesson so well that, although old lady Gordon became gradually aware of his inconstancy, she saw no reason to interfere in Eunice's behalf.

Miss Judy, the only person whose comfort was really imperilled, sat chatting that day with Miss Sophia, all unconscious, till the peas were cooked. She then went out to put them in her mother's prettiest china bowl--the little blue one with the wreath of pink roses round it--and daintily spread a fringed napkin over the top. Maybe Tom might notice how pretty it looked, Miss Judy said to Miss Sophia, though he noticed sadly little of what went on around him. Anyway, it would be a compliment to Anne to send the peas in the best bowl. Miss Judy hesitated before putting the soup in the next best bowl. It would be a serious matter indeed if the old man should seize it and fling it out of the window before Kitty could stop him, as he often did with her cooking and her dishes. Still, it did not seem quite polite to Kitty to send it in a tin cup, so that, after Miss Judy had consulted Miss Sophia, who assented very quickly and firmly,--fearing that the rest of the soup might get cold,--Merica was given the second best bowl also, but charged not to let go her hold on it until Kitty herself took it out of her hand.

"Give it to old Mr. Mills with sister Sophia's compliments," Miss Judy said, with unconscious irony.

Miss Sophia ate her portion of the soup with much satisfaction, while Miss Judy watched her with beaming eyes, turning at length to follow Merica's progress with a radiant gaze. It always made her happy to do anything for any one; and she never felt that she had very little to do with. As Merica came out of the Watsons' gate and started up the big road with the bowl of soup, Miss Judy, in her satisfaction, could not help calling the girl back to ask whether Tom Watson appeared to notice the wreath of roses. It was a bit disappointing to have Merica say that she hardly thought he had. Then Miss Judy, sighing a little, gave the servant further directions, telling her to go on from the Mills' house up to Miss Pettus's to ask for the loan of the chicken-snake which Mr. Pettus had killed that morning. Miss Judy was afraid that Miss Pettus would forget to hang it before sundown (white side up) on the fence to fetch rain, which was really beginning to be needed very much by the gardens. If Miss Pettus neglected it till the sun went down, there would of course be no use in hanging it on the fence at all, so that, to make sure, it was better for Merica to borrow it and fetch it home when she came. Merica sullenly demurred that the snake would not stay on the stick, and that it would crawl off as fast as it was put on; adding rather insolently that she could not be all day putting a garter-snake on a stick and having it crawl off every step of the way down the big road--with a fire under the wash-kettle. But Miss Judy gently assured her that the garter-snake--or any other kind of a serpent--would stay on a stick if it were put on tail first. It stuck like wax then, Miss Judy said, and could not crawl off, no matter how hard it might try.

"And when you've got the garter-snake tail-first over the stick, you might stop and remind Miss Doris not to be late in coming by for me to go with her to-morrow morning to take her dancing lesson. No, wait a moment; you had best ask her if she will be so very kind as to come to see me this evening, so that we may practise some songs--particularly 'Come, rest in this bosom, my own stricken deer'--and then we can talk over the dancing lesson," said Miss Judy.

There were not many days during the whole year, and there had hardly been a whole day for many a year, on which Miss Judy and Doris could not find some good and urgent reason for seeing one another.

XIII

THE DANCING LESSON

Miss Judy's ideas of chaperonage were very strict. It would have seemed to her most improper to allow Doris to take the dancing lesson alone. Not that she thought any harm of the dancing-master; Miss Judy thought no harm of any one. Her ideals were always quite apart from all considerations of reality. It made no difference to her that only the neighbors were usually to be met on the way, and that on the morning of the first lesson the big road lay wholly deserted when she passed out of her little gate with Doris by her side--she herself so small, so timid, so frail, and Doris so tall, so valiant, so strong. Yet the sense of guardianship, full of deep pride and grave delight, filled her gentle heart even as it must have filled the Lion's when he went guarding Una.

It was a pity that Lynn Gordon missed the pretty sight. He had passed Miss Judy's gate before she came forth with her charge, and now, all unconscious of his loss, strolled idly on in the opposite direction. Doris was in his mind as he went by the silver poplars, but he caught no glimpse of her through the thick foliage, and could barely see the snowy walls of the house. Slowly he walked on as far as the brow of the hill at the southern end of the village, as he had done once before, and stood for a moment again looking out over the land. Then, turning, he retraced his aimless steps.

The day was like a flawless diamond, melting into the rarest pearl where the haze of the horizon purpled the far-off hills. The sapphire dome of the heavens arched without a cloud. Below stretched the meadows, lying deep and sweet in new-cut grass and alive and vivid and musical with the movement, the color, and the song of the birds. He did not know the names of half of them; but there were vireos, and orioles, and thrushes, and bobolinks, and song-sparrows, and jay-birds, and robins--all wearing their gayest plumage and singing their blithest songs. Even the flickers wore their reddest collars and sang their sweetest notes, as if vying with the redwings which flashed their little black bodies hither and thither as flame bears smoke. The scarlet tanagers also blossomed like gorgeous flowers all over the wide green fields. And the bluebirds--blue--blue--blue--gloriously singing, seemed to be bringing the hue and the harmony of the radiant heavens down to the glowing earth.

The melodious chorus was pierced now and then by a note of infinitely sad sweetness, as a bird lamented the wreck of its hopes which had followed the cutting of the grass. But the mourner was far afield, so that its sweet lament was but a soft and distant echo of the world-pain which forever follows the passing of the Reaper. The young man heeded it as little as we all heed it, till our own pass under the scythe. He stopped to lean on the fence, drinking in the beauty and fragrance, thus unwittingly disturbing the peace and happiness of a robin family which was dwelling in a near-by blackberry bush. The head of this flowering house now flew out, protesting with every indignant feather against this unmannerly intrusion of a mere mortal upon a lady-bird's bower. Trailing his wings and ruffling his crest, he sidled away along the top of the fence as if there were nothing interesting among those blossoms for anybody to spy out--in a word, doing everything a true gentleman should do under such circumstances, no matter how red his waistcoat may be. Another robin sang what he thought of the situation, expressing himself so plainly from the other side of the big road, that even the young man understood; while still another robin, too far away to know what shocking things were going on, poured out a rapturous song as though all living were but revelling in sunshine.

Lynn Gordon turned away, thinking with a smile what a wonderful thing love must be, since it could so move the gentlest to fierceness, as he had just seen; and could bring the fiercest to gentleness, as he had often heard. Smiling at his own idle thoughts, he wandered on. The loosened petals of the blackberry bloom drifted before him like snowflakes wafted by the south wind. The rich deep clover field on the other side of the way was rosy and fragrant with blossoms. The wild grape, too, was in flower, its elusive aromatic scent flying down from the wooded hillsides, as though it were the winged, woodland spirit of fragrance.

Approaching the woods at the foot of the hills, Lynn saw a log cabin, which he had not seen before, although he knew that the land upon which it stood was a part of the Gordon estate; part of the lands which would one day be his own. As his careless glance rested on the cabin, strains of music coming from it caught and fixed his attention. Some one was playing an old-fashioned dance tune on a violin, and Lynn unthinkingly followed the stately measure till he found himself standing unobserved before the humble dwelling from which it came, free to gaze his fill at a scene revealed by the open passage between the two low rooms.

The passage walls were spotless with white-wash, and the shadows of the trees standing close behind showed deeply green beyond. Against these soft green shadows and on one side of the passage stood the white-haired Frenchman. His fiddle was under his chin, held tenderly as though it were a precious thing that he dearly loved. His head was a little on one side and his eyes were partially closed,--like the birds,--as if he too were under the spell of his own music. His right arm, jauntily raised, wielded the bow: his left toe was advanced, then his right, now this one, now that one--advancing, bowing, retiring--all as solemn as solemn could be.

And more serious if possible than Monsieur Beauchamp was Doris herself, facing him from the opposite side of the passage; grave, indeed, as any wood nymph performing some sacred rite in a sylvan temple. When the young man saw her first, she stood poised and fluttering, as a butterfly poises and flutters uncertain whether to alight or to fly. The thin skirt of the book-muslin party coat, delicately held out at the sides by the very tips of her fingers, and lightly caught by the soft wind, spread like the wings of a white bird. The slippers, heel-less and yellow as buttercups, were thus brought bewitchingly into view--with the narrow ribbon daintily crossed over the instep and tied around the ankle--as they darted in and out beneath the fluttering skirt. Her golden hair, loosed by the dance and the breeze, fell around her shoulders in a radiant mantle, growing more beautiful with every airy movement. The exquisite curve of her cheek, nearly always colorless, now faintly reflected the rose-red of her perfect lips as the snowdrift reflects the glow of the sunset. Her large dark eyes were lost under her long dark lashes, and never wandered for an instant from the little Frenchman's guiding toes. And Doris understood those toes perfectly, although she knew not a word of the dancing-master's native language, and not much of her own when spoken by him, as he now mingled the two, quite carried away by this sudden and late return to his true vocation. She followed their every motion as thistledown follows the wind: stepping delicately, advancing coquettishly, courtesying quaintly--as Miss Judy had taught her,--and retiring, alluring, only to begin over and over again. It was all as artless, as graceful, and as natural as the floating of the thistledown; and such a wonderful dance as never was seen on land or sea, unless--as the young man thought, with the sight going to his head like royal burgundy--the fairies might have danced something of the kind on Erin's enchanted moss within the moonlit ring.

On fiddled the old Frenchman and on winged the young girl, both of them far too deeply absorbed in the serious business in hand to notice the onlooker, till Miss Judy came, actually running and almost out of breath. She had seen the young man's approach to the cabin, but she was too far away to reach it before him, although she had come as quickly as she possibly could. Hastening, she sharply reproached herself for having been persuaded to go so far from the cabin to look at Mrs. Beauchamp's strawberry bed. It was, of course, utterly impossible to have foreseen this young gentleman's appearance. Nevertheless, she should not have left Doris, poor child, alone for a moment--none knew that better than herself. And now to see what had come of her unpardonable thoughtlessness! What would this stranger think of Doris, or of any well brought up girl, whom he thus found neglected? At this thought Miss Judy, for all her mildness, ruffled with indignation as a hen ruffles at any rough touch upon her soft little chicks. She would try, she said to herself, to retrieve her mistake. She would do her best to show this grandson of old lady Gordon--who made fun of everybody--that her Doris was no ignorant rustic, roaming the woods all forgotten by her proper guardians. As she ran, much agitated and even alarmed, the little lady mechanically looked over her shoulder and put her little hands behind her back to make sure that the point of her neckerchief was precisely where it should be. She never felt quite equal to a difficult undertaking until she was certain of the point's exact location, and now, having learned by long practice to tell with some degree of certainty by touch,--on account of its being so hard to look in the long mirror,--she now thought that it was in its proper place, and she accordingly entered the green-shadowed end of the passage with a very high air. Her manner was indeed as high and even haughty a manner as could possibly be assumed by a very small, very gentle old lady, who was blushing, and trying to get her breath after a rush across a ploughed field. The greeting which she gave Lynn Gordon was therefore noticeably cold; also the introduction to Doris was plainly wrung from her by politeness, and given with marked reluctance. So that the young man, not understanding in the least, naturally wondered greatly at the change in the little lady, who had been so winningly gracious on the previous day.

Monsieur Beauchamp's eager hospitality did something to make Lynn feel less like an unpardonable intruder. And madame, also, was kind in her matter-of-fact way. She took no notice whatever of her husband's introducing her as the Empress Maria. Acting as though she had been deaf she placed chairs for her guests, and then went out to fetch them some new crab cider in thick glass tumblers on a large deep plate. An inflexible custom of Oldfield required that a guest should be offered some kind of refreshment, no matter what the time of day. Fortunately, there was no rigid rule as to the kind of refreshment; one kind would do as well as another, provided only that something was offered promptly. Each Oldfield housekeeper had her own preference, her own specialty. Miss Pettus might with perfect propriety offer a piece of fried chicken at three o'clock in the afternoon to a guest who had dined at one; old lady Gordon might order a full meal at any hour for any one who dropped in between meals, to her own and everybody else's entire satisfaction; Miss Judy might serve a handful of gooseberries, either green or ripe, on her mother's prettiest plate, and the guest always remarked how pretty it was, whether she dared eat it or not. Mrs. Beauchamp accordingly felt herself to be uncommonly lucky in having this newly made, still sweet, crab cider to offer her visitors. She had seen the time when she had been obliged to hand a glass of toddy, and that, too, without a sprig of mint or a bit of ice.

It was quite as much a part of Oldfield manners to accept the refreshment as to offer it. Miss Judy took her glass of cider and sipped it daintily, saying how nice it was, yet managing while doing this to make it quite plain that the intruder was meant to feel that _he_ had no share in the sweet graciousness extended to her hostess. The eyes of the two young people met involuntarily, and although Doris, coloring, dropped her eyes in confusion, Lynn saw the sudden dimpling of her cheek. It was the second time they had looked at each other; Doris had given him one startled, fleeting glance, with a frightened exclamation and a hurried dropping of skirts, when she had first seen him standing in front of the passage, looking at her as she danced. He now found no opportunity to speak to her. Miss Judy arose to take Doris away as soon as courtesy would allow her to do so without seeming to slight Mrs. Beauchamp's cider. She was ever more careful of the feelings of her inferiors than of her equals, if that were possible. She was quite determined, nevertheless, to withdraw at once. The lesson might be resumed another day, she said to Monsieur Beauchamp, gently but firmly, adding that Miss Wendall's mother and uncle were doubtless expecting her. And this Miss Judy said loftily, almost haughtily, in a tone calculated to inform the young gentleman that Miss Wendall's mother and uncle were personages to be reckoned with. As Miss Judy left her seat, Doris also arose and started to get her hat, which was hanging against the wall. Lynn Gordon eagerly sprang up and took it down and handed it to her. He had no thought, however, of accepting his dismissal, when Miss Judy, after taking leave of the dancing-master and his wife with a grand little air which puzzled the worthy pair exceedingly, merely inclined her head stiffly in his direction. Instead, he coolly went before her and Doris to the gate, and, after holding it open till they had passed out, calmly followed them, carefully taking his place by Miss Judy's side, and away from Doris.

For a few paces Miss Judy was silent with surprise, rigid with displeasure. She went, carrying her little head very high indeed, and taking dainty, mincing steps. She held up the front of her black bombazine by a delicately small pinch of the cloth between her forefinger and thumb, and her little finger was very elegantly crooked. Her sweet face was set as a flint. She was stern in the determination to set Doris right in the estimation of old lady Gordon's grandson--this handsome, mannerly, young gentleman, who might nevertheless have his grandmother's disposition as well as her features, for all Miss Judy knew. Yet her stiffness began to thaw under Lynn's genial frankness as a light frost melts under a warm sun. He was tactful considering his age, his inexperience, and especially his sex--if tact be ever a matter of age and experience, as it is almost always one of sex. He had, too, a gay, boyish way about him which was very winning, and which gradually disarmed gentle Miss Judy almost completely within the length of a couple of rods. Within three rods she began to talk quite naturally, the only lingering sign of her mildly fixed purpose being the unusually didactic turn of her remarks.

"You know, I presume, Mr. Gordon," she said primly and with significant distinctness, as one who weighs her words, "that this is the oldest portion of Kentucky. There is, as I am well aware, a widespread but erroneous impression that the Blue Grass Region is older than this; but no well-read person could possibly fall into such an unaccountable error. The real Kentucky pioneer was Thomas Walker, who came from Virginia through Cumberland Gap into the south-eastern part of the state in 1750, and made explorations coming this way;--not Daniel Boone, who first entered the northern and middle part of it as late as 1769. The Blue Grass people are not to blame, perhaps, for honestly believing their section to be the oldest in Kentucky, since most of them have been brought up to believe it; but it is really surprising that, with a good many reading citizens who know something of history, they should cling to this extraordinary misbelief in opposition to all written and unwritten history of the state. The first house, too, was built here in the Pennyroyal Region, near Green River. Why, my dear sir, I can give you personal assurance that the ruins of this first house in Kentucky are still to be seen. I have never seen them myself," added Miss Judy, scrupulously; "but many friends of mine have seen them."

When the young man had shown himself to be as much surprised and impressed as she thought he should be, Miss Judy went on with growing confidence. She called his further attention to the fact that this Green River country was also the sole region of Virginia's military grants to her officers of the Revolution. Miss Judy cautiously disclaimed any knowledge of what the mother state might have done for the soldiers of the line--with a soft touch of condescension. But she spoke with authority in saying that Virginia had never granted a foot of land--north of Green River--to any officer of the War of Independence.

"I am not speaking of lands that may have been bought by officers from the Indians, or of lands that may have been taken up by officers as by other settlers. Lands so acquired are doubtless scattered all over the state. I am speaking only of grants of lands in Kentucky, given by Virginia to her officers of the Revolution for military services. These--one and all--were given here, in this Pennyroyal Region, and nowhere else; it was here, therefore, that those distinguished soldiers came to live and to die, after doing their duty to their country. And it was their coming that made this Pennyroyal Region so utterly unlike the rest of Kentucky."

"Indeed! Yes, I see," responded Lynn Gordon, with his eyes on Doris's dimpling cheek.

And then Miss Judy's soft heart suddenly smote her with the feeling that she had perhaps been too severe. She had unconsciously been stepping more and more mincingly, holding the pinch of black bombazine higher and higher, and crooking her little finger more and more jauntily.

"I have been told that there are some perfectly sincere persons living in the Blue Grass Region who honestly believe that their estates were granted to an officer ancestor for service in the Revolution. And these deluded persons are not so much to be blamed as to be pitied for being brought up to believe something that is not true. It is their misfortune, not their fault, poor things!"

Sure now that she was growing harsh indeed and almost cruel, Miss Judy gracefully turned the talk in a less serious direction, toward one which was, nevertheless, still calculated to impress this stranger with the character of the country.

"Of course you know the heraldic herb of the Pennyroyal Region," she said smilingly, as she pointed to an humble, unpretentious bunch of rather rusty green, growing thick all along the wayside. "We who live in it are fond of it and proud of it too, as fond and proud of it as England ever was of the rose, or France of the lily, or Scotland of the thistle, or even Ireland of the shamrock."

"How interesting," said the young man, still looking at Doris--not at the pennyroyal.

Doris glanced also at him, feeling great pride in Miss Judy's easy acquaintance with heraldic matters, and wishing to see if he were as much impressed as she thought he ought to be.

"Yes, I think it _is_ interesting," continued Miss Judy, making her small mouth smaller by pursing it up in the dainty way that she would have ascribed as primping. "In fact, the pennyroyal has long been of far greater importance to the world at large than might be supposed by those who have not looked into the subject. You know, I presume, that many of the old English poets have mentioned it in their most famous works, and always with the greatest respect."

"Indeed," exclaimed the young man again, with his gaze fixed upon the sweet curve of Doris's velvet cheek.

"Chaucer and Dryden and Drayton and Spenser--every one of these fathers of English poesy has something to say of the pennyroyal," Miss Judy went on airily, still quite firmly resolved to let old lady Gordon's grandson see--no matter how polite he might be--that Doris's friends were well-read and cultured persons, however much to the contrary his first impression may have been. "Their mentions of it are mostly very mysterious, though; they speak of it as 'a charming, enchanting, bewitching herb.' All of them, indeed, describe it in that manner, if I remember correctly--though one does forget so easily," the little lady added, as if she read Chaucer and Dryden and Drayton and Spenser every day of her life. "I am quite sure, however, that Drayton refers to it 'in sorceries excelling.' And I also seem distinctly to recall the witches of _The Faerie Queene_ as cleansing themselves of evil magic by a bath of pennyroyal once a year--I don't, though, recollect what they bathed in during the rest of the time. Spenser calls it out of its true name, however, as I remember his reference to it. He says that the witches bathed in 'origane and thyme'; but everybody knows well enough that origane was the pennyroyal's name in Spenser's day. Chaucer and Drayton knew it in their time as 'lunarie,' but they all meant neither more nor less than our own pennyroyal and nothing else."

As the three walked slowly up the big road under the flowering locusts, Miss Judy, relenting more and more, gradually became quite her sweet, friendly self. She finally admitted, with the gentle frankness natural to her, that she had never quite been able to understand these mysterious poetic references to such a simple homely thing as the pennyroyal, which she had known ever since she could remember. She now freely acknowledged that its character must have altered with the passing of the ages, or must have been changed by the coming from the old world to the new. And yet, on the other hand,--as she pointed out to the young man in a tone of confidence,--there were the famous old simplists, belonging to the very time and the very country of these fathers of poetry, who had known and prized an herb which was much like the pennyroyal of to-day, and which they had called "honesty."

"This certainly must have been identical with our own heraldic pennyroyal," Miss Judy declared. "For that surely is the honestest little thing growing out of the earth. So upright, so downright. So absolutely uncompromising! Sturdy, erect, wholesome, useful, clean, bristly, and square of stem, it holds its rough leaves steady and level at the full height of its reach; standing thus, it never bends; falling, it always goes the whole way down; pulled up, its roots come all at once. So that there is no half-heartedness of any sort in this most characteristic product of southwestern Kentucky."

There was a shade of uneasiness in the proud glance which Doris now stole at Lynn, with a sudden uplifting of her lovely dark eyes. He could but admire Miss Judy's learning, she thought, and yet she could not help seeing, with a tender sense of humor, how exquisitely quaint the little lady's manner was.

Lynn grew bold, reading the look and the unconscious, embarrassed, half smile. "But, Miss Bramwell, pray tell me, does not the pennyroyal belong to the whole state? I have always taken it to be a member of the mint family."

Miss Judy, stepping still more mincingly, and holding the pinch of black bombazine higher than ever, tossed her little head as she acknowledged the possibility of a distant relationship. She intimated that she considered this too far off to count, even in Kentucky, where kinship appeared to stretch farther than anywhere else in the world. And she forthwith repudiated for the sturdy pennyroyal all the traits and the habits of the whole disreputable mint tribe--root and branch.

"Never under any circumstances will the honest pennyroyal be found lolling supinely in the low, shady, wet haunts of the mint. The true pennyroyal--you should know, my dear sir--stands high and dry, straight out in the open. And it stands on its native heath, too," Miss Judy said, smiling herself now, and quite forgetting all discomfiture and all displeasure. "The pennyroyal never had to be fetched from somewhere else--as the blue grass was--to give _its_ name to _its_ region!"

They had reached Miss Judy's gate by this time, and when Lynn mechanically opened it, the little lady passed through it before she realized that propriety required her to go all the way home with Doris, since the young gentleman evidently did not intend stopping short of Sidney's threshold. But the shyness which was natural to her, and which had dropped away from her only at Doris's need, suddenly came over her again. She stood still, uneasy, blushing, and gazing after the young couple who were strolling on under the flowering locusts. A look of apprehension quickly clouded the blue of her sweet old eyes with real distress. It was clearly wrong for her to have left them. She had made another mistake; her neglect had again placed Doris in a false light. It would be hard, indeed, to set this worst remissness right. She would gladly have called to Doris even then, had she not feared to embarrass her further. The tears welled up, but she brushed them away, so that not one step of the young people's progress up the hill might be lost to her wistful sight. Suddenly she cried out in such dismay that Miss Sophia, dozing as usual, was startled wide awake, and came to see what was the matter, as soon as she could rise from her chair and reach the door.

"Look at that poor, dear child!" cried Miss Judy, quite overcome. "Just see what she is doing, sister Sophia! And that, too, is all my fault. How was Doris--dear, dear little one--to know that she must never dream of taking off her gloves in the presence of a gentleman, when I have never thought to point out to her the indelicacy of doing such a thing?"

And Doris would not know what to do when they reached the house. If Sidney were only at home, it would not be so bad--so Miss Judy said. But Sidney was sure to be out "on-the-pad," as she herself described her professional rounds, never suspecting that she might be using a corruption from the French of _en balade_. Miss Judy knew Sidney's habits too well to hope for any help from the chance of her being at home. She--dear little lady--was quite in tears now and almost ready to wring her hands.

Meanwhile, the young man and the young maid went happily along under the white-tasselled locusts, between the sweet-scented green fields and the blooming gardens, toward the silver poplars. They, themselves, were not thinking of the conventionalities, nor troubling their handsome heads about the proprieties. Doris was chatting shyly, expressing Miss Judy's thoughts in Miss Judy's phrases with most winning quaintness, and at the same time with an unconscious revelation now and then of her innocent self. A gleam of sweet humor shone fitfully from her soft, dark eyes as firelight flickers through the dusk, and in this, at least, gentle Miss Judy had no part. Doris told, with the dimple coming and going and many swift, shy, upward glances, of Monsieur Beauchamp's bordering the lettuce beds with _fleur-de-lis_ because--as he said--they were the imperial lilies of France; and of the scorn of the Empress Maria, who pulled them up as soon as his back was turned,--so that his feelings should not be wounded,--although she was quite determined thus to make room for the early turnips. And then, gaining confidence from Lynn Gordon's rapt attention, Doris went on to approach literature. She had an instinctive feeling that Miss Judy would have advised books as a theme for polite conversation with a stranger. She had read, so she said, Goldsmith's poems and some of Moore's; Miss Judy thought Burns's poetry better suited to a gentleman's than to a lady's taste, so Doris said. She acknowledged knowing very little about novels, except _The Children of the Abbey_ and some of Miss Jane Austen's tales. Miss Judy thought, so Doris went on to say, that prose was less refined than poetry and more apt to be worldly; so that she considered it best to wait till one's ideals were well formed and firmly fixed, before reading very many novels. Miss Judy thought a great deal of ideals; she considered them, next to principles, the most important things in the world, Doris said earnestly, looking gravely up in Lynn Gordon's face. There was one novel, however, that Doris was most eager to read. It was a very, very new one, and it was called _Vanity Fair_. Perhaps Mr. Gordon might have heard of it--then quickly--possibly he had even read it. She colored faintly when he said that he had read it and that he scarcely thought her quite old enough yet to enjoy it, although it was a great book.

"So Miss Judy thinks," sighed Doris. "Perhaps she will allow me to read it when I am older. Anyway, she lets me read all the poetry in her mother's dear old _Beauty Books_, and it's beautiful. The poems haven't any names signed to them, but that doesn't matter. They go with the pictures of the lovely, lovely ladies--all with such small waists and such long curls, the whole picture in a wreath of little pink roses and tiny blue forget-me-nots--those dear old _Beauty Books_ that smell so sweet of dried rose leaves!"

XIV

MAKING PEACE

Sidney was not only out "on-the-pad" that day, but she came home later than usual. The children and Uncle Watty were hungry and waiting impatiently for the basket; and there were many urgent household duties to be done before bedtime. Doris made one or two shy attempts to speak of her dancing lesson and the incident which had occurred in connection with it. But speaking to Sidney in the rush of her domestic affairs was like trying the voice against the roar of a storm. So that Doris was compelled to put off the telling till the next morning.

On the next morning, however, there was even less chance for a quiet word than there had been on the night before. Sidney was up betimes, to be sure, and bustling round, but it was merely in order to be ready for an important engagement, a most important one, which brooked no delay. It was barely nine o'clock when she set off up the big road, with her ball of yarn held tightly under her left arm, and her knitting-needles flying and flashing in the sunlight. Her sunbonnet was pushed as far back on her yellow head as it could be, to stay on at all, and such was her stress of mind that she took it off and hung it on the fence, and let her hair down and twisted it up again, thrusting the comb back in place with great emphasis, no less than three times, within the few minutes during which Doris stood at the gate looking after her.

It was a hard task which lay before Sidney that day. She was the peacemaker, as well as the funmaker, for the entire community. One fact was as well known, too, as the other, but there was nothing like an equal demand for the two offices; for the Oldfield people dwelt together, as a rule, in such harmony as Sidney found, not only monotonous, but even a little dull now and then. It is but natural to wish to exercise a talent, and to be unwilling to hide it, when we know ourselves to be possessed of it in no common degree. When, therefore, some foolish joke of Kitty Mills's set the long-smouldering sense of wrong fiercely blazing in Miss Pettus's breast, Sidney could but feel that her longed-for opportunity had come at last. She was not in the least daunted by the knowledge that the quarrel was an old one, newly broken out afresh like a rekindled fire, and consequently much harder to mend, or even to control, than if it were new. Nor had her ardor been lessened in the slightest by finding that everything which she had said on the previous evening had served but as oil to the flame of Miss Pettus's burning wrath. Sidney's self-confidence and courage, being of the first order, only rose with all these obstacles. They merely put her all the more on her mettle, and she had rested well and confidently through the night, satisfied to have secured Miss Pettus's promise not to say or to do anything until the following morning. Ten hours' sleep must cool even Miss Pettus's temper in a measure, Sidney thought, like the real philosopher that she was, and she herself would be better prepared with arguments after time for reflection. Miss Pettus had flared up like gunpowder, then as always, when least expected, so that Sidney had hardly known at the moment what to say.

And for all her reliance upon her own strength and tact, she had none too fully realized the necessity for prompt action. It was lucky, indeed, that she was early; for, early as she set out, she met Miss Pettus coming down the big road "hotfoot," as Sidney said afterward, already on the way to see Kitty Mills. It was not of the slightest use, Miss Pettus cried,--beginning as soon as she came within speaking distance of the peacemaker,--not of the least use in the world for Sidney to begin again arguing about Kitty Mills's never meaning to cheat anybody. She, Miss Pettus, was sick and tired of having things smoothed over, and of being told and told that she was mistaken. She was not mistaken. The facts stood for themselves: Kitty Mills had said when she swapped the dorminica for the yellow-legged pullet and a bit to boot, that the dorminica laid big eggs. Let Kitty Mills deny that if she dared! Then let Sidney, or the whole of Oldfield, come and look at the little eggs that that dorminica did lay. It was bad enough to be so cheated in a hen trade, without having it thrown up to you almost every day of your life, in some silly joke. What did Kitty Mills mean, except insult, by sending her word that she couldn't expect a fat hen to lay the same up hill and down dale. And then, as if that were not enough, what did Kitty Mills do, but send back that same yellow-legged pullet, and even the very same bit, offering to swap again. All this Miss Pettus demanded breathlessly in unabated excitement.