The Wit and Humor of America, Volume V

She sat by admiring his appetite until he had finished, then she made him drink the boneset tea to the last drop. He talked admirably all through the "dinner," and it was with a sigh of almost regret that she started away with the empty dishes. She came back presently.

"You will find our summer cottage up in that direction," she pointed out. "We shall expect you to—to keep out of range during the day, but to report at the kitchen door at dusk, when you will be escorted to the road."

"I shall follow your instructions to the letter," he assured her, and she again slowly walked away. To save her, the man-hater could not think of another reasonable excuse for prolonging the interview. He was a most gentlemanly young man, and he had splendid eyes!

The male trespasser spent the next hour in hunting clothes and anathematizing dogs. His finds were confined strictly to rags and pairless arms and sleeves, and finally he gave up, with everything accounted for but worthless. Discovering a high, grassy plot near the creek, screened from the woods by a thick copse of hazel bushes, he lay down to think matters over and promptly fell asleep.

Perhaps half an hour later he slowly opened his eyes with the feeling that he was being compelled to awaken, and found Adnah seated quietly beside him, keeping the mosquitoes away from him with a gracefully waved hazel branch.

"Just sleep right on," she gently urged. "I often sleep for hours on hot afternoons in this very place."

"How did you come here?" he demanded, sitting up, startled.

"I hunted you," she confessed with a delighted little laugh. "I'm so glad you're awake at last and don't want to sleep any more. I felt just sure that your eyes were blue. And they are!"

Her delight at this fact was so obvious that he felt uneasy.

"You see, I listened outside the window while Aunt Mattie told Aunts Ann and Sarah all about you," she confidingly went on. "Aunt Sarah and Aunt Ann were for telephoning for the sheriff anyhow, but Aunt Mattie wouldn't let them. She likes you. So do I."

"Oh!" said the astonished young man. For the first time in his life conversation had failed him.

"Of course," said the girl simply. "Well, I waited until they all lay down for their after-dinner naps, and climbed out of my window so as not to disturb them. They do enjoy their naps so much, you know. I didn't find you at the pool but I just hunted until I did find you. I've been sitting here a long time watching you. You look so nice when you are asleep."

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 fashion 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 circumstances 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 pass 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 snatched 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 assure you ladies—," began the serpent, but Aunt Sarah cut him short.

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

Thus crushing 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 noble 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 butterfly 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 pronounced. 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 aprons, 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.

"Remember," she warned, "that however impulsive our poor, misguided niece may appear, you must not kiss her!"

Without waiting for reply she opened the door for him. Adnah, smiling happily through the last of her tears, sprang to meet him, and, seizing his hand, drew him down on the couch beside her.

"I'm going to keep you here always, now," she declared with pretty authority, as she locked her arm in his and interlaced their fingers.

He looked around at the aunts and suddenly longed for his own clothes. They had drawn their chairs in a close semi-circle about the couch and were helplessly staring. He felt the hot blood burning in his cheeks, on his temples, down the back of his neck.

"You will stay, won't you?" Adnah anxiously asked him.

"I think I shall take you with me, instead," he replied, smiling down at her in an attempt to conquer his embarrassment.

Adnah rapturously sighed. The spectators suddenly arose, retiring to the far corner of the room, where they held an excited, whispered consultation. Presently they came back and sat down in the same solemn half-circle. Aunt Sarah ceremoniously cleared her throat.

"You will please to unclasp your hands and sit farther apart," she directed. This obeyed, she proceeded: "Now, Mr. Nelson—"

"Melton, if you please," corrected the young man, producing a business card that he had rescued.

"Oh!" exclaimed the aunts, exchanging wondering glances.

"We understood that it was Nelson," murmured Aunt Matilda. It seemed that the hands had not been so tightly clasped over the ears as he had thought.

Aunt Sarah gravely adjusted her glasses.

"'John Melton, Jr.,'" she read. "'Representing Melton and Melton, Administrators and Real Estate Dealers. General John A. Melton. John Melton, Jr.'"

There was a suppressed flutter of excitement and again the three aunts exchanged surprised glances.

"I think I may safely say, may I not, Sisters Ann and Matilda, that this quite alters the case?" was Aunt Sarah's strange query.

"Quite so, indeed," agreed Aunt Matilda, complacently smoothing her apron.

"Very much so," added Aunt Ann.

"Decidedly," resumed Aunt Sarah. "Your father, young man, handled the estate of our deceased Uncle Peter in a most upright and satisfactory fashion—for a man. So far, much is in your favor, since our unfortunate niece will not be contented without some sort of a husband. Your personal qualifications have yet to be proved, however. We presume that you can offer documentary evidence as to your own worth, sir?"

"Not for a day or so, unfortunately," confessed the young man. "The dogs destroyed all my papers. The only thing I could find was a portion of a brief note from my mother."

The three aunts, as by one electric impulse, bent forward with shining eyes.

"From your mother!" hungrily repeated Aunt Sarah. "Let us see it, if you will, please."

He produced it reluctantly. It was not exactly the sort of letter a young man cares to parade.

"'My beloved son,'" Aunt Sarah read aloud, pausing to bestow a softened glance upon him. "'I can not wait for your return to say how proud I am of you. Your noble and generous action in regard to the aged widow Crane's property has just come to my ears, through a laughing complaint of your father about your unbusinesslike methods in dealing with those who have been unfortunate. In spite of his whimsically expressed disapproval, he feels that you are an honor to him. Your sister Nellie cried in her pride and love of you when she heard—'"

The rest of the letter had been lost, but this was enough.

Adnah had gradually hitched closer to him, and now her hand, unreproved, stole affectionately to his shoulder. Aunt Matilda was wiping her eyes. Aunt Ann openly sniffled. Aunt Sarah cleared her throat most violently.

"Your references are all that we could wish, young man," she presently admitted in a businesslike tone. "We shall waive, in your favor, our objections to men in general. If we must have one in the family we are to be congratulated upon having one whose mother is proud of him."

Coming from Aunt Sarah this was a marvelous concession. The young man bowed his head in pleased acknowledgment and, by and by, crossed his legs in comfort as a home-like feeling began to settle down upon him. Suddenly observing their bloomered exposure, however, he tried to poke his legs under the couch, and twiddled his thumbs instead.

"And when do our young people expect to be married?" meek Sister Ann presently ventured to inquire.

"As quickly as possible," promptly answered the young man, smiling triumphantly down at the girl by his side. He was astonished, and rather pleased, too, to find her suddenly embarrassed and blushing prettily.

"I believe, then," announced Aunt Sarah, after due deliberation, "that you may now kiss our niece; may he not, Sisters Ann and Matilda?"

"He may!" eagerly assented the others.

"Very well, then, proceed," commanded Aunt Sarah, folding her arms.

The young man hastily braced himself to meet this new shock, then gazed down at the girl again. She was still blushing in her newly-found self-conscious femininity, but she trustingly held up her pretty lips to him, looking full into his eyes with the steady flame of her love burning unveiled—and he kissed her.

"Ah-h-h-h!" sighed the three man-hating spinsters in ecstatic unison.