At the Age of Eve Part 23

"I see that it's poorly worth while to educate you," she began, but Neva interrupted her nervously.

"Oh, mamma, don't say _educate jew_."

"Now, did you ever hear anything that sa.s.sy? I don't see how _no_ man could want you!"

Mrs. Sullivan's tone was tearful, but Neva's sensitive ears had already drunk in their money's worth of culture at the college for young ladies.

"There you go again! '_Want chew._' Mamma, haven't I begged you not to go through life saying chew and Jew, unless you refer to mastication--or an Israelite?"

The tears actually started at this piece of filial cruelty, and Mrs.

Sullivan turned to me for consolation.

"Now, I'll put it to you, Miss Ann, ain't that enough to make a woman wish she hadn't never saw a child? And do you know what this trouble is all about?--That common, ig'nant clodhopper, Hiram Ellis, that Nevar's almost broke her neck to see since she's been home."

"Why, I thought Hiram was in high favor--with you _all_," I said in surprise, remembering the occasion of the fainting-spell.

"He was, so long as Nevar was just a ordinary country girl," Mrs.

Sullivan explained, wiping her eyes and glancing with a look of shame and reproach at Neva; "but do you reckon me and Tim's spending all that money on her education, and then let her turn in and marry anybody as _plain_ as Hiram Ellis?"

"_Plain!_ Well, I don't see as we're so _fancy_!" Neva said indignantly.

"Is she going to marry him this morning?" I asked, and I noted then the extreme fussiness of Neva's hair arrangement. It bore a truly leonine aspect. She had on her school uniform, and so, except for the number of cla.s.s-pins, she had not sinned excessively in the way of dress. But the hair gave me some misgivings as to her intentions.

"Ain't no telling what she'll do," her mother said hopelessly. "She's bent on going to church where she can see him! We've done all we could to keep her at home, even to locking up her hats and Tim carrying off the curling-irons in his pocket so she couldn't curl her hair. But do you know what that young'un done? I'll be blessed if she didn't hunt up her pappy's old tool box and git out his old _augur_--and curled her hair on that. Did you ever hear of a girl so deep in love that she'd _curl her hair on a het augur_?"

"Oh, mamma," she begged piteously, "don't say 'pappy!' And _don't say 'het!'_"

So it happened that I walked alone through the "garden." Alone, yet I felt that I was in a beloved presence, for Richard's last letter was with me. I sat down at the edge of the lake which had dried up in the Stone Age, and drew the letter out from its resting-place to read it over again.

Richard's handwriting is heavy, black, and almost as free from flowing curves as the chirography of a literary man. "Sweetheart," the letter began, and the firm lines which formed the letters looked very much as if he meant it. It was signed "Richard, R. I.," in humorous acceptance of the t.i.tle I had given him. But perhaps the dearest thing in connection with the letter was the faint aroma of "Habana" which hung over it. I held the sheets up close to my face and shielded them from any vandal winds that might slip up and covet that sweet odor; and I recalled the smile in his eyes when he made me the promise that he would always be smoking when he wrote to me--that the letters might be more realistic.

"Don't tell me any more that you are a full-grown woman," he said, as he made the promise. "You are a child--but adorable."

He knew that I would be lonely, the letter stated, but he had left orders with a book-dealer that a batch of new books be sent out to me each week, to help while away the time. Orders had also been left with the florist and confectioner--and I must at once report to him any negligence on the part of these worthies.

"Of course you have already acted upon my suggestion that you return the Byron book," the letter continued, as if the mention of books had brought this affair to his mind, but I fancied that he had mentioned them rather as a means of leading up to this. "I know you would not keep it after I have shown you the impropriety of your doing so."

"Impropriety!" That is a word that I hate and avoid. No one had ever, to my knowledge, used it in connection with anything I have ever done up until this time. I bridled a little as I read it over. Somehow, out here in the wilds, I seemed to recall suddenly that if Richard is a gallant lover, so also is Alfred an old, and very dear friend--while the Byron book is a delightful possession.

"I shall not send it back," I decided, after a little reflection. "I shall stand my ground. He is not unreasonable, and he will sooner or later understand that I am old enough to judge for myself between things proper and improper! Ugh, how the words remind me of my prospective mother-in-law!"

I hastily mapped out a letter in reply to this, telling him that I should keep the book, because I saw no reason, on the grounds he mentioned, for sending it back.

So intent was I upon this idea that I hastily jumped up from my sunny nook by the old lake and shook out my skirts. I would go home right now and write that letter!

I made my way across the breadth of the valley and leisurely climbed the hill, for the midday sun was quite hot. I paused and looked back once in a while, for the garden was so beautiful this morning.

There was absolutely no thought of defiance in my idea of showing Richard my viewpoint, for I did not dream that he considered the affair in any other light than the cut-and-dried distaste to "a young woman receiving presents from a young man to whom she is not engaged."

He had not _asked_ me to return the book. He had simply shown me the error of my way--and I had failed to recognize it.

I stopped again to look around at the wild beauty of the place before leaving it, then, with a little running start, I quickly gained the crest. When I had reached it I stopped once more, this time with a startled surprise, for I found myself face to face with Neva. I noted, with amus.e.m.e.nt, that she had possessed herself of a hat.

"Well, so you decided to come for a walk?" I said in greeting. "How did you manage to get your hat out of the wardrobe?"

She stopped still in the path and her eyes suddenly met mine in a look of dumb misery. I first thought that the question might have been embarra.s.sing to her, and was trying to think of something to cover it, when she spoke.

"Piled a box on a chair on a table," she explained with an effort, "until I could reach up high enough to prize the top off. 'Twas old and loose--and I still had the augur!"

"Neva! Think of the perseverance! And after all that, you didn't get to see him?"

At my words her mouth tightened at the corners, and her eyes looked very bright and dry.

"Oh, I saw him," she answered bitterly, after a moment's struggle. "He drove right past me while I was trudging down that dusty road to church. But he didn't see _me_. He had Stella Hampton in the buggy with him."

"Stella Hampton? Who is she?"

"She's the girl that sicked the fit doctor on to me!"

I tried to comfort her, but she was desolate.

"It ain't that I care so much about _him_," she a.s.sured me, forgetting, in her misery, her boarding-school English, "but oh, I can't bear to face them at home. It's so terrible to be made ashamed before folks."

I agreed with her and insisted that she go home with me, not braving the ordeal of facing her own family until late in the afternoon, when they should have forgotten it a little. Tears of grat.i.tude came to her pretty, troubled eyes as she joyously accepted my invitation.

Mother was on the front porch as we came up the walk and she welcomed Neva cordially.

"Ann," she said, turning to me and speaking in an undertone, "there is a long-distance call for you. The operator has rung up several times, then said that the 'party' would call again at twelve-thirty."

"Oh, mother!" I cried, with a great throb of pleasure. In a few minutes I should be listening to the sound of his voice, and that was a deal more satisfying than the aroma of cigar smoke in a letter!

"Little runaway, where have you been all morning?" I heard in his dear, drawling tones after the connections had been made and listening ears supposed to be removed from the line. "I've been trying for three hours to get you."

"I've been out for my Sunday morning tramp," I answered, a sudden overwhelming longing to _see_ him sweeping over me. His voice sounded so near that I could scarcely believe that half the length of the state lay between us.

"Alone?"

There was no drawl to this query.

"No, not alone. I had your letter with me."

"When are you going to answer it, sweetheart?"

"To-day. I have already thought up some of the things I'm going to say to you."

It might have been thought transmission, or it might have been chance, but at all events, it is the honest truth, that the next question was the one in my mind.

"And what have you to say for yourself about Doctor Morgan's book, my lady?"

"A good deal more than is profitable to say over a long-distance telephone," I replied, hoping to change the drift of the talk. I felt that I could say my little speech better on paper than I could over the wires.