Chapter XXVI: For Better, for Worse

Miss CARROWTHERS having gone out with Mrs. SKAMMERHORN to skirmish with the world of dry-goods clerks for one of those alarming sacrifices in feminine apparel which woman unselfishly, yet never needlessly, is always making, FLORA sat alone in her new home, working the latest beaded pin-cushion of her useful life. Frequently experiencing the truth of the adage, that as you sew so shall you rip, the fair young thing was passing half her valuable time in ripping out the mistaken stitches she had made in the other half; and the severe moral discipline thus endured, made her mad, as equivalent vexation would have made a man the reverse of that word. Flippant social satirists cannot dwell with sufficient sarcasm upon the difference between the invincible amiability affected by artless girls in society and their occasional bitterness of aspect in the privacy of home; never stopping to reflect that there are sore private trials for these industrious young crochet creatures in which the thread of the most equable female existence is necessarily worsted. Miss POTTS, then, although looking up from her trying worsted occupation at the servant who entered with a rather snappish expression of countenance, was guilty of no particularly hypocritical assumption in at once suffering her features to relax into a sweetly pensive smile upon learning that there was a gentleman to see her in the parlor.

"'MONTGOMERY PENDRAGON,'" she softly read from the card presented. "Is he alone, BRIDGET, dear?"

"Sorra any wan with him but his cane, Miss; and that he axed me wud I sthand it behind the dure for him."

There was a look of desperate purpose about this. When a sentimental young man seeks a private interview with a marriageable young woman, and recklessly refuses at the outset to retain at least his cane for the solution of the intricate conversational problem of what to do with his hands, it is an infallible sign that some madly rash intention has temporarily overpowered his usual sheepish imbecility, and that he may be expected to speak and act with almost human intelligence.

With hand instinctively pressed upon her heart, to moderate its too sanguine pulsations and show the delicate lace around her cuffs, FLORA shyly entered the parlor, and surprised Mr. PENDRAGON striding up and down the apartment like one of the more comic of the tragic actors of the day.

"Miss POTTS!" ejaculated the wild young Southern pedestrian, pausing suddenly at her approach, with considerable excitement of manner, "scorn me, spurn me, if you will; but do not let sectional embitterment blind you to the fact that I am here by the request of Mr. DIBBLE."

"I wasn't scorning and spurning anybody," explained the startled orphan, coyly accepting the chair he pushed forward. "I'm sure I don't feel any sectional hatred, nor any other ridiculous thing."

"Forgive me!" pleaded MONTGOMERY. "I reckon I'm a heap too sensitive about my Southern birth; but only think, Miss POTTS, what I've had to go through since I've been amongst you Yankees! Fancy what it is to be suspected of a murder, and have no political influence."

"It must be _so_ absurd!" murmured FLORA.

"I've felt wretched enough about it to become a contributor to the first-class American comic paper on the next floor below me," he continued, gloomily. "And here, to-day, without any explanation, your guardian desires me to come here and wait for him."

"I'm sorry that's such a trial for you, Mr. PENDRAGON," simpered the Flowerpot. "Perhaps you'd prefer to wait on the front stoop and appear as though you'd just come, you know?"

"And can you think," cried the young man with increased agitation "that it would be any trial for me to be in your society, if--? But tell me, Miss POTTS, has your guardian the right to dispose of your hand in marriage?"

"I suppose so," answered FLORA, with innocent surprise and a pretty blush; "he has charge of _all_ my money matters, you know."

"Then it is as I feared," groaned her questioner, smiting his forehead. "He is coming here to-day to tell you what man of opulence he wants you to have, and I am to be witness to my own hopelessness!"

"What makes you think anything so ridiculous, you absurd thing?" asked the orphan, not unkindly.

"He as good as said so," sighed the unhappy Southerner. "He told me, with his own mouth, that he wanted to get you off his hands as soon as possible, and thought he saw his way clear to do it."

The girl knew what bitter, intolerable emotions were tearing the heart of the ill-fated secessionist before her, and, in her own gentle heart, pitied him.

"He needn't be so sure about it," she said, with indignant spirit. "I'll never marry _any_ stranger, unless he's awful rich--oh, as rich as anything!"

"Oh, Miss POTTS!" roared MONTGOMERY, suddenly, folding-down upon one knee before her, and scratching his nose with a ring upon the hand he sought to kiss, "why will you not bestow upon me the heart so generously disdainful of everything except the most extreme wealth? Why waste your best years in waiting for proposals from a class of Northern men who occasionally expect that their brides, also, shall have property, when here I offer you the name and hand of a loving Southern gentleman, who only needs the paying off of a few mortgages on his estate in the South to be beyond all immediate danger of starvation?"

Turning her pretty head aside, but unconsciously allowing him to retain her hand, she faintly asked how they were to live?

"Live!" repeated the impetuous lover. "On love, hash, mutual trust, bread pudding: anything that's cheap. I'll do the washing and ironing myself."

"How perfectly ridiculous!" said the orphan, bashfully turning her head still further aside, and bringing one ear-ring to bear strongly upon him. "You'd never be able to do fluting and pinking in the world."

"I could do anything, with you by my side!" he retorted, eagerly. Oh, Miss POTTS!--FLORA!--think how lonely I am. My sister, as on may have heard, has accepted Gospeler SIMPSON'S proposal, by mail, for her hand, and is already so busy quarrelling with his mother that she is no longer any company for me. My fate is in your hands; it is in woman's power to either make or marry the roan who loves her--"

"Provided, always, that her legal guardian consents," interrupted the benignant voice of Mr. DIBBLE, who, unperceived by them, had entered the room in time to finish the sentence.

Springing alertly to an upright position, and coughing excessively, Mr. PENDRAGON was a shamefaced reproach to his whole sex, while the young lady used the edge of her right foot against a seam of the carpet with that extreme solicitude as to the result which is always so entirely deceiving to those who have hoped to see her show signs of painful embarrassment.

After surveying them in thoughtful silence for a moment, the old lawyer bent over his ward, and hugged and kissed her with an unctuousness justified by his great age and extreme goodness. It was his fine old way of bestowing an inestimable blessing upon all the plump younger women of his acquaintance, and the benediction was conferred on the slightest pretexts, and impartially, up to a certain age.

"Am I to construe what I have seen and heard, my dear, as equivalent to the conclusion of my guardianship?" he asked, smilingly.

"Oh, please don't be so ridiculous--oh, I never was so exquisitely nervous," pleaded the helpless, fluttered young creature.

"I reckon I've betrayed your confidence, sir," said MONTGOMERY, desperately; "but you must have known, from hearsay at least, how I have felt toward this young lady ever since our first meeting, and should not have exposed me to a temptation stronger than I could bear. I have, indeed, done myself the honor to offer her the hand and heart if one who, although but a poor gentleman, will be richer than kings if she deigns to make him so."

"Why, how absurd!" ejaculated the orphan, quickly. "It's perfectly ridiculous to call me well off: and how could I make you richer than kings and things, you know?"

The old and the young men exchanged looks of unspeakable admiration at such touching artlessness.

"Sweet innocence!" exclaimed her guardian, playfully pinching her cheek and privately surprised at its floury feeling. "What would you say if I told you that, since our shrewd EDDY retired from the contest, I have been wishing to see you and our Southern friend here brought to just such terms as you appear to have reached? What would you say if I added that, such consummation seeming to be the best you or your friends could do for yourself, I have determined to deal with you as a daughter, in the matter of seeing to it that you begin your married life with a daughter's portion from my own estate?"

Both the young people had his hands in theirs, on either side of him, in an instant.

"There! there!" continued the excellent old gentleman, "don't try to express yourselves. FLORA, place one of your hands in the breast of my coat, and draw out the parcel you find there. * * * That's it. The article it contains once belonged to your mother, my dear, and has been returned to me by the hands to which I once committed it in the hope that they would present it to you. I loved your mother well, my child, but had not enough property at the time to contend with your father. Open the parcel in private, and be warned by its moral: Better is wilful waist than woeful want of it."

It was the stay-lace by which Mrs. POTTS, from too great persistence in drawing herself up proudly, had perished in her prime.

"Now come into the open air with me, and let us walk to Central Park," continued Mr. DIBBLE, shaking off his momentary fit of gloom, "I have strange things to tell you both. I have to teach you, in justice to a much-injured man, that we have, in our hearts, cruelly wronged that excellent and devout Mr. BUMSTEAD, by suspecting him of a crime whereof he is now proved innocent at least _I_ suspected him. To-morrow night we must all be in Bumsteadville. I will tell you why as we walk."