The Chronicles of Rhoda Part 18

"I'm jist siventeen, And I've niver had a beau."

Norah sang at the top of her strong voice accenting each line with great enjoyment.

"Is there any gint will have me?

Ah, don't say no!"

The last phrase was coaxing in the extreme, and I might have been properly impressed if I had not known that Norah was quite old, twenty-five almost, and that down in the very bottom of her trunk there was the picture of a wild Irish lad whom she had loved and left in the old country. Sometimes I used to dream that he would come to America, too, and get rich notwithstanding his wildness, and find Norah out, and, just suppose, he might make a great lady out of her! Life was full of such glorious possibilities in those days!

But to go back to the story.

"Why it's Burton Raymond," Norah explained, in disconnected jerks. "And his uncle keeps the shop. A small, dark shop with eggs in the window.

And there's mice under the counter, the freshest mice that I've iver seen. It's like household pets that they be! And Burton waits on the customers. And at night he fiddles to himself. But there's no money in fiddling. Sure I knew a lad in Ireland wance that fiddled for tuppence a night. And he died of starvation, and wint to glory, rest be to his sowl."

She stopped to hold up a small wet garment with indignant hands.

"How did you iver git them black stains?" she demanded.

"I don't know, Norah," I answered, meekly.

After that I was divided in spirit about Burton Raymond. There was the part of me that gloried in the crusader, and even found something romantic in starvation, and the other part that winced at the b.u.t.ter and eggs shop.

The lovers were very pretty to watch. Burton Raymond went up and down our street a great many times every day, and Auntie May always seemed to be out in the garden looking at the flowers. She was growing tall herself, like one of the plants. All her soft hair was gathered upon the top of her head, and she never ran about as she used to do. She had forgotten how to be a little girl. She changed her dress a great many times a day, and she bought a band of velvet ribbon to wear around her throat, and sometimes she would catch me in a dark corner, and hug me, rapturously.

"The saints preserve me from iver being in love!" Norah cried, shaking her head. "What will the owld gintlemin say? And the owld lady?"

The old gentleman was my granddad Lawrence, who lived around the corner in a big house that outshone ours as the sun does the moon. There were more flowers there and more trees, and a fat horse in the stable that drew a little dog-cart about the streets of our town, and best of all there was a fountain in the garden, where two little iron boys stood under an iron umbrella, and watched the birds that came to take their baths in the pool at their feet. Just now, however, the house was all closed up, granddad and grandmother were away, the fountain in the garden was quite choked and dusty, and the birds had found another place to bathe.

Grandmother Lawrence was my worldly grandmother, and when she was at home we tried to live in as good style as possible that she might be pleased with us. Always it had been a sorrow to her that my mother had married a poor man, and she was quite resolved that no such catastrophe should happen to Auntie May.

"I would rather see May dead," I have heard her declare dramatically, "yes, dead at my feet, than married to a poor man!"

She never said this when my father was around; but he knew as well as the rest of us that Auntie May was destined for great things.

She was so pretty, Auntie May was. Sometimes she let me stay in her room when she did her hair before the gla.s.s, and I would handle its soft lengths fondly.

"Auntie May," I asked once, peeping over her shoulder into the mirror, "may I be your bridesmaid?"

First she flushed up and laughed, and then she leaned back in the chair, and gazed at me, wretchedly.

"Rhoda," she said, "I am the most miserable girl in the whole world!"

That was the day that grandmother and granddad Lawrence came home, and there was a stir all through their big house and our little one, and Auntie May was back in her own room, surrounded by all the pretty things that were particularly hers. She looked around it, consideringly. There were roses on the carpet, and roses on the big arm-chairs, and roses climbed up the walls and fell in festoons about the ceiling. There was a white fur rug in front of the fire-place, and a silver glitter on the bureau. Auntie May looked at it all in quite a discontented fashion.

"I like things plainer," she said, plaintively.

Her lip trembled.

"I'd like a garret--and bare floors--and music!" she cried.

"What is that about music?" grandmother Lawrence questioned, coming in the door.

She had a string of pearls in her hand, and she fastened it around Auntie May's throat as she spoke. It was a present brought from abroad.

"There, child," she said, not unkindly, "wear your pearls and be happy, and don't let us have any more of this nonsense."

"Nonsense!" Auntie May exclaimed.

"Yes, nonsense," grandmother Lawrence repeated, coldly.

Auntie May's eyes flashed.

"Do you think you can pay me to give him up?" she asked, in growing indignation. "Do you think that I care about pearls? Do you think that I care about anything--but just him?"

She had risen to her feet, and was confronting grandmother.

"Let me be happy in my own way," she pleaded, with soft appeal. "Mother, let me be happy!"

I thought that for just a moment grandmother weakened; but it was only for a moment.

"Happy with a beggar!" she retorted. "Never!"

The pearls went down on the floor in a sudden shower.

"Then I'll never be happy in all my life!" Auntie May answered, in a broken voice.

After that it seemed as if there was a heavy cloud over the whole family. We were none of us as cheerful as we used to be, not one, and people spoke in whispers as they do when some one is very sick. And Auntie May cried! She cried until her pretty eyes were red, and all her soft hair was tousled and damp from much mourning. And my mother cried with her. It was a terrible time.

We children had talked the matter over among ourselves, and we all sided with Auntie May. Every night little d.i.c.k prayed an extra clause to his long prayer. It came right after the place where he prayed for puppies.

"Please, G.o.d, let me have two puppies," he asked, in a loud, decided tone. "One brown one, and one white one with brown spots and a brown tail. And, please, G.o.d, bless Auntie May, and send her a new beau."

One night he made another announcement.

"Please, G.o.d, you needn't bother about Auntie May's beau. When I grow up I'll marry her myself."

"You shan't!" little Trixie cried, in sudden wrath, from the next crib.

"When I grow up I'm going to marry her _myself_."

She bounced in her bed.

d.i.c.k answered her from his knees. He looked like an angel as he knelt there in his nightgown, with his fair curls falling about his flushed face.

"Girls can't marry girls," he explained, scornfully.

"They can!" Trixie screamed.

"They can't!" d.i.c.k roared.