Patty's Perversities

"Who said I'd go?" she laughed, springing up.

"Who asked you to?" he retorted.

"But I will, if only to plague you," she said.

"Don't feel obliged to," he replied, starting down the walk. "It really won't annoy me enough to make it worth your trouble."

Patty darted into the house, and up to her chamber, like a swallow. Unconsciously she caught up Bathalina's strain.

"'Sudden and awful, from the height of pleasure,
By pain and sickness thrown upon a down-bed,'"

she carolled; and for once the hymn put on a garb of mocking gayety.

"Patience Sanford!" solemnly ejaculated the pious maid-servant, putting her head in at the chamber-door. "It's tempting Providence to sing that hymn that way. No good'll come of it, you may depend."

"Nonsense, Bath! I could dance to the hymns of the cherubim!"

And into the garden she flew to pin a bunch of clove-pinks at her belt.

"Do you know how solemn you looked," Putnam asked as they drove along the smooth road, between unfenced fields green with the starting aftermath, "when I found you on the piazza? Were you thinking of your sins?"

"No: of those of my neighbors."

"Of omission, or commission?" he asked, looking at her closely.

"Both," she returned, flushing a little. "I was lonesome, of course. You wouldn't like to stay at home alone all day."

"On the contrary," he said, "there are few things I like better. It is strange how a woman is never good company for herself. She can never keep still and think, but must always be rattling away to somebody."

"You think so because you don't know."

"My observation has not been very extensive, perhaps; but it has been all in one direction. Men are content enough to be alone."

"It is all the conceit of the men," she retorted. "You all fancy you are never in so good company as when alone."

"Unless we are favored by some one of your sex."

"Nonsense! You don't think so. What a man finds to say to himself, I cannot imagine; unless, indeed, his mind is one grand vacuum."

"The wisdom of a man's reflections must always be beyond a woman's comprehension," he returned. "Some men have made great mistakes by forgetting this."

"Then, of course, you'll never marry," Patty ventured. "You wouldn't want a companion who couldn't understand you."

"Oh! I may join 'the noble army of martyrs,'" he answered in the same bantering tone he had been using. "Every man will be ruled by some women; and with a wife his resistance would be a trifle less restrained, you see."

"I have heard it said," she answered, "that, as love increased, good manners decreased; but I never made such an application of it."

"Of course," he began, "having a legal mind, I regard a wife as a piece of personal property, and" —

"There!" she interrupted. "It is perfectly maddening to hear you talk in that way about women. I hate it."

"I'm sure I don't mean any disrespect," he answered soberly. "I should have married long ago, had I been able."

"Whom would you have married?" she demanded. "You speak as if you had only to make your selection, and any girl would be glad of the chance to take you."

"That is because I think so highly of the penetration of your sex," he retorted, with a return to his light manner; adding, with some bitterness, "but, when a man is as poor as a church mouse, he can have as little thought of marrying, and being given in marriage, as the angels in heaven."

"Don't be profane. You have your profession."

"Oh! I earn enough to keep soul and body together, if I don't do too much for either. But this is not a cheerful subject, even if it were in good taste for me to be complaining of poverty. Did you know my nephews came last night?"

"Yes; and I am so glad! It is always pleasant to have Hazard Breck here. Of course, they'll be at the picnic."

"Yes. Frank, you know, has graduated, and Hazard is a junior. It is two years since I have seen them."

"They probably feel ten years older. We are to have company too. Grandmother is coming."

With such discourse they rolled over the country road towards Mackerel Cove. Under the gay surface of the conversation was a sting for Patty in the lawyer's allusion to his poverty. He was usually very reticent about his affairs; and it may have been for that reason that the gossips of Montfield called him "close." "He's close-mouthed and he's close-fisted," Mrs. Brown was accustomed to say; "and most generally the things go together."

To Patty's thinking few faults could be worse. To an open-handed Sanford, avarice was the most disgusting of vices; and this fatal defect in her companion was like the feet of clay of the image of gold.

CHAPTER IV

THE PICNIC

Seated upon a stone which happened to be clean enough for even her exacting taste, Mrs. Sanford was conversing with Mrs. Brown, a frowsy lady whose house-keeping was a perennial source of offence to her order-loving neighbor. Mrs. Brown was a miracle of tardiness, – the last-comer at every gathering, the last guest to depart. Indeed, so fixed were her friends in the habit of expecting her to be behindhand, that she could have chosen no surer method of throwing into confusion any plan wherein she was concerned than by appearing for once on time; which, to do her justice, she never did. "She is so slow," Will Sanford once said, "that she always looks solemn at a wedding, because the grief of the last funeral has just got into her face. Her smiles appear by the time another funeral comes."

On the present occasion Mrs. Brown had reached Mackerel Cove just as preparations for dinner were being completed. Mrs. Sanford, who had been superintending the making of the coffee, had seated her plump person upon the stone mentioned to rest and get cool, when the late-comer appeared. Mrs. Brown sank languidly upon the fallen trunk of a tree.

"I didn't know as I should ever get here," she said. "My girl's gone mad."

"Gone mad!" ejaculated the doctor's wife. "I knew something dreadful would happen when you found that silver dollar, and kept it: that's always unlucky. Is she really mad? You don't mean Selina?"

"No, not Selina, but the hired girl. She must be mad. She poked all my hair-pins down a crack in the floor. Selina thinks she did it to plague me; but I know she's crazy."

"I declare! The trouble you have with your girls beats every thing I ever heard of. I should think you'd rather do the work yourself than have them about."

"Oh! I must have a girl to shirk things on to," said Mrs. Brown.

"Shirk!" exclaimed Mrs. Sanford. "Lawful sakes! I don't have time to shirk. If I hadn't so much to do, I might find time to plan and contrive to get rid of half my work; but now" —

The words died upon her lips as she caught sight of a buggy coming along the shady wood-road. In it sat her daughter Patty, chatting happily with Tom Putnam. The sight filled her with amazement little mixed with pleasure. The lawyer might be a man after her husband's heart; but he was not after hers. He constantly said things she could not understand; he oppressed her as might an unguessed conundrum; and, moreover, he was a dozen years older than her daughter. Clarence Toxteth filled the measure of Mrs. Sanford's requirements when she considered her daughter's matrimonial prospects, which, thrifty housewife that she was, was not seldom. The young man was rich, good-looking, trimly dressed; and Mrs. Sanford appreciated to the full the advantages of the possession of money. The worthy lady was not without a deeply-seated suspicion that Patty, in the depth of her heart, preferred the lawyer to his more pretentious rival. The girl was like her father, and looked at things in a way wholly unaccountable to her mother, who saw only the other side of the shield. To-day Mrs. Sanford had been at ease in her mind, believing Toxteth to have been the chosen escort. She chanced to be out of the way when he arrived at the picnic-ground, and supposed her daughter to be about somewhere. What, then, was her dismay to perceive her driving up with Mr. Putnam, as boldly and gayly as if she had never deceived her family!

"Is dinner ready, mother?" called the transgressor lightly, as they drove up. "I am as hungry as three polar bears."

"Good-morning, Mrs. Sanford!" the lawyer said. "There is a delightful smell in the air, as if you had been making coffee."

"So I have," she returned, a little mollified by the compliment implied. "You are just in time: they are blowing the horn now."