Mae Madden Part 14

and 'Anna Ross,' and I used to wear my hair in very smooth braids, I remember. I was ever so good."

"Impossible; you must have forgotten," suggested Norman. "You surely whispered in school and committed similar dreadful crimes. Poor little prig."

"No, don't," plead Mae; "please don't laugh at the little girl me. I love to think of her as so goody-goody. Last night," and Mae lowered her voice, "I seemed to see little Mae Madden kneeling down in the old nursery in her woolly wrapper saying her prayers," and Mae brought up on the prayers very abruptly, and bent over toward the sand and began to draw hastily. "Here comes nine-year-old Mae. Mr. Mann, you may do the describing."

"O, I suppose there were doll's parties, first valentines, and rides with Albert in his buggy, when you clung very tightly to the slight arm of the carriage and smiled very bravely up in his face. You must have been pretty then."

"No, I was dreadfully ugly. I had broken out two teeth climbing a stone wall."

"You had stopped being good?"

"Yes, that only lasted a little bit of a time."

"Miss Mae, I'm sure you were never ugly, but naughty and silly, I dare say. Kept a diary now, didn't you?"

"Yes, and went to sleep with Eliza Cooke's poems under my pillow every night, and my finger holding the book open at some such thrilling verse as this:

'Say on that I'm over romantic In loving the wild and the free, But the waves of the dashing Atlantic, The Alps and the eagle for me.'"

"Did you wear your hair plaited when you were ten years old?" enquired Norman, intensely busy with another drawing.

"O no; I didn't do anything when I was ten years old but get mad and make up with my two dearest friends."

"One of whom was your dearest friend one-half of the time and the other the rest of it, I suppose."

"Don't be satirical, sir. I had a lover when I was eleven; I used to skate with him and write him little notes, folded very queerly."

"Why do you draw twelve and thirteen with their heads down?" asked Mae, after a moment.

"Because they read so much; everything they can get hold of, including, possibly, a very revised edition of 'Arabian Nights'?"

"Yes," laughed Mae, "and my first novel, 'Villette.'"

"You go to a play for the first time now," suggested Norman. "How you clasp your hands and wink your eyes and bite your lips! And next day, in front of your mother's pier-gla.s.s, how you scream 'O, my love,' and gasp and tumble over in a heap in your brown calico, as the grand lady did the night before, in her pink silk."

"Brown calico, indeed! I never condescended to die in my own clothes, let me a.s.sure you. The garret was overhauled, and had been since I was a mere baby, for effective, sweeping garments. Let us hurry along over fourteen and fifteen. I was sentimental and tried to be so young-ladyish then. I used to read history with Albert, and always put on both my gloves when I started out, and had great horror of girls who talked loud in the street. I learned to make bread, and shirt bosoms, and such things."

"Well, here you are in a long dress, Miss Sweet Sixteen. I remember you home from boarding school on a vacation."

"What did you think of me?" asked Mae, "didn't we have a nice time that summer? O, how silly I was!"

She hurried on, because the eyes had given her that peculiar look again, which put her heart in a tremble. "I did have a beautiful time at boarding school," she continued, "the darlingest princ.i.p.al and such girls."

"Then I suppose you wrote a salutatory in forlorn rhyme to end off with," laughed Norman, "and read it, all arrayed in white, in a trembling voice, and everybody applauded, and even old Judge Seymour admired it, while you were reading, with your pink cheeks and trembling hands and quivering voice."

"Abominable! I didn't have the salutatory, and the girl who did, read a superb one, as strong and masculine--"

"Then the Judge went to sleep, I'm sure," declared Norman.

"Well," said Mae, "you are leaving out two years," for Norman had leaned back against the rock with his arms folded.

"By and by," said Norman, "we all come off to Europe, and some of us go through the heart-ache, don't we?"

"Yes," replied Mae, softly.

"But come out ahead one day at Sorrento, perhaps?" asked Norman. To which Mae made no direct reply.

"All the Mae Maddens have faded away," she said, looking down at the sand again. "The tide is rising." And she walked forward to the ripples of water, and then came slowly back and stood before Norman seriously.

He laughed.

"Why, Mr. Mann," said Mae, "I have been so very, very wicked."

The dreadful Mr. Mann only laughed again.

"You act as if it were all a joke. I never saw you so merry before."

"I have never been as happy before in my life."

"Why?" asked Mae, in a low voice.

"Because I have found you," he answered earnestly, and before she knew it Mae was lifted in the strong, manly arms, her pink cheek close to Norman's brown one, and his lips on hers. She leaned her face against his and clung tightly to him,

"O, Mr. Norman Mann," she said, "do you really want me as much--as I do you?"

And Norman, still holding her tightly, bent his hand, with hers clasped in it, to the sand, and after the Mae Madden, he wrote another name, so that it read:

MAE MADDEN MANN.

Then he said a great many, many things, all beginning with that electric, wonderful little possessive p.r.o.noun "my," of which he had discoursed formerly, and he held her close all the while, and they missed the next train for Naples.

The gay peasant costume fell about the girl's round lithe form like the luxuriant skin of some richly marked animal; but out of her eyes looked a woman's tender, loving, earnest soul. Norman Mann had saved her.

CHAPTER XIV.

Edith was quietly married to Albert at Easter time, in the English Chapel at Florence. The event was hastened by the sudden appearance of Mae's parents, who set sail soon after hearing of the Sorrento escapade and the embryonic engagement, which awaited their sanction before being announced. Everything was beautifully smooth at last. Edith and Albert left the day of their marriage for Munich, and later, Mrs. Jerrold was to settle down with them at Tuebingen. The rest of the party were to summer in Switzerland; then came fall, and then--what?

Norman thought he knew, and Mae said she thought he didn't, but this young woman was losing half her character for willfulness, and Norman was growing into a perfect tyrant, so far as his rights were concerned.

Easter is a season of marriages. Mae read in a Roman paper the betrothal announcement of the Signor Bero and Signorina Lillia Taria. "I would like to send them a real beautiful present," said she, and Norman did not say no. So these two hunted all over Florence, and at length, in the studio of a certain not unknown Florentine, they discovered the very gift Mae desired--a picture of a young Italian soldier, bringing home his bride to his own people. There was the aged mother, proud and happy, waiting to bid the dark-eyed girl welcome. "She has a real 'old Nokomis'

air," laughed Mae. "I know she would have told her son not to seek 'a stranger whom he knew not.'" The distant olive-colored hillsides, the splashing fountain near at hand, each face, and even the thick strong sunshine seemed to bear a tiny stamp with Italy graven on it. "The name of the picture is exactly right," said Mae. Under the painting were these words: "Italia Our Home."

Norman would hardly have been human if he had not cast a quick glance at her as she stood thoughtfully before the picture. Mae was almost as good as an Italian for involuntary posing. She had made a tableau of herself now, with one hand at her eyes to shade them from the glare of the sun that fell fiercely through the window, her head half on one side, and a bit of drapery, of lace or soft silk, tight around her white throat. She felt Norman's glance, and looked up quickly, and smiled and shook her head: "No, Italy is not my home, although I love it so well. There is a certain wide old doorway not many miles from New York, and the hills around it, and the great river before it, and the people in it, all belong together, too. That's where we belong, Norman, in America, our home," and Mae struck a grand final pose with her hands clasped ecstatically, and her eyes flashing in the true G.o.ddess of Liberty style.

"Yes, I believe we do, Mae; I am almost anxious to get back and begin work in that young, eager country."