The Gentle Art of Cooking Wives Part 10

"Well, they'll find we're _two_ many for them."

Then with a sudden burst of laughter she exclaimed:

"Oh, I'm going to egg Steve on to a fight! Wouldn't it be fun! I wonder if Steve could fight!"

"Reckon he could," said the old man with a gleam in his eye that seemed to pierce the darkness of his gla.s.ses. "He don't look it exact an' his manners don't promise it, but ther may be fight in him somewhere. Ther be men, yer know, can't talk even about ther weather without shakin' a fist in yer face. He ain't thet kind."

"No. If he were he would have murdered Sarah Maria long ago."

"He would thet, fer a fact. Then ther's others thet air so afeard--so skeart thet a two-year-old bootblack or ther shadder of publick derishion could put 'em ter flight. Be thet his kind?"

"I guess not!" blazed Nannie. "Steve's afraid of nothing, living or dead."

"No, he ain't afeard. I kin see thet; but he's peaceable."

Just at this moment Nannie glanced down the sloping sides of the ravine and saw Hilda Bretherton panting her way up toward the house.

Now, these two had not met since Hilda married and started off on her wedding trip to France, shortly before Nannie became engaged. True to the usual direction of her popularity, Hilda had married a small man, beside whom she looked the good-natured giantess she indeed was, but he was enormously rich, and in her particular set she was accounted one of fortune's favorites.

Since casting her lot in the country Nannie had been into town but little. For society as she had known it she cared nothing. Then, too, marriage had entered the magic circle of the Young Woman's Club and changed its membership, so that Nannie felt herself an alien. She was not consciously lonely in the country, but yet there was something so significant in the glad cry she uttered when she caught sight of Hilda, and the unusual warmth of her greeting, that old Hayseed looked on from his side of the fence with a meditative air.

"The colt's a-yearnin' fer somethin' without knowin' it," he said to himself as Nannie dragged Hilda into the house.

"I ought not to sit down," Hilda panted. "Oh, dear! Let me get my breath! Do you see how awfully fat I am? and my husband don't weigh but a hundred and twenty--think of that! A sparrow for a protector! If ever I wanted to get behind him to escape a mouse or anything, what should I do?"

"Where is he?" asked Nannie.

"What--the mouse?" screamed Hilda.

"No," said Nannie, "the husband;" and then the two fell a-laughing in the old foolish way.

"Husband! Oh, I thought you'd have something of that kind around, and one would be enough for to-day."

"No, really! Where is he?"

"Over on the other side of the ravine. You see, we missed the road and got entangled in the forest. Ye G.o.ds! how literally you've taken to the woods, Nannie! Well, DeLancy didn't feel he was equal to a climb, so I came alone, presumably to find the road, but I couldn't go on without seeing you, so I've stolen a visit."

"You'd better!" said Nannie. "If ever you pa.s.s me by I'll haunt you!"

"I know that. I always was afraid of you. I always said you were a little----"

"Sh-h!" said Nannie, imitating Prudence Shaftsbury's air and manner.

"Dear old Prue!" said Hilda. "I saw her the other day. I believe she's really happy. She don't say much, but she looks it. She's awfully swell, too. Why, you hear Mrs. Ralph Porter on all sides. She leads everything. That girl has more tact and diplomacy than any one I ever saw. Awfully nice girl, too. Here I am, always putting my foot in it.

DeLancy says I fling a rope around my neck so surely as I open my mouth, and with each succeeding word I give it a jerk. Oh, dear me! I ought to be going. He'll be wild! Why, you don't look any too well.

What's the matter with you, Nan? Aren't you happy, child?"

"Yes. Mind your business!" said Nannie in the old defiant way.

"Bless me! bless me! You haven't changed a mite! I thought marriage would improve you. Oh, do you know Evelyn Rogers was married the other day?"

"No," said Nannie with quickened interest.

"Yes--not at her home. She was visiting her aunt in New York, and there she married her villainous-looking professor, and would you believe it? I heard they went right off to the slums on a wedding trip, taking a thief, and an anarchist, and a murderer with them, as chaperons, I suppose. Oh, I ought to be going!"

"To the slums?" asked Nannie.

"No, no. I ought to get out of here. DeLancy is insane by this time, I know! I _must_ run!"

"Hilda, you sit still and cool off! You've just been in a stew ever since you came."

"I'm in one all the time. Do you remember what some of you girls said of me at that first meeting of the club--I'd be kept in a continual stew? Never were truer words spoken. Oh!" and she groaned loudly.

"Why don't you get done--with it?" asked Nannie.

"I can't," said Hilda coolly. "I'm in for it now and must go on to the bitter end. It's too late to chew the cud of reflection."

"Don't count on the end," laughed Nannie, looking at her friend's rotund figure. "There's no end to you, Hilda. You're an all-round woman."

"Indeed I am! If you could only see the number of offices I fill. I'm nurse, doctor, valet, messenger, and on cross days general vent for the humors."

"Is he really ill?"

"Oh, I don't know. He has dyspepsia. I guess he don't feel any too well, and nothing pleases him. He took a notion that a sea voyage would cure him, and it didn't. He snarled and snapped all the way, and oh, I was so sick--ugh! and I had to drag myself around after him.

Then next he tried the German baths. He's tried everything, and now--oh, now," she continued with a groan, putting her handkerchief to her face, "he says that society is injurious to him. And what do you suppose he has done?" she asked, raising her voice and peering from above the handkerchief which she had pressed to her face. "He's rented a lonely cabin in the Adirondacks for a year--a year! and there I'm to live! Imagine me, my dear! I shall grow so rusty that when I return to civilization I shall only be able to hang on the back door and creak while others are talking. Mercy upon us! there's DeLancy! He'll find me visiting! I'll never hear the last of this as long as I live! Where can I go? What can I get under? Oh, there's nothing big enough in all the world to cover me! Woe is me! I must always remain in the open!"

"Lie down there," said Nannie authoritatively. "I'll cover you."

"You!" screamed Hilda. "You! Oh, you elf! you brownie! you mite--you widow's mite! What could you cover?"

"Lie down! Be quick! The enemy approaches!" cried Nannie, convulsed with laughter.

Hilda gave one glance from out the window and then fell flat on the divan.

"I am lost!" she groaned.

"I'll defend you," said Nannie bravely.

"You! Oh, you atom! you molecule! you microbe! What can you do?"

"Be quiet. You are dead--do you hear? You're _dead_--dead as a doornail; dead as a mummy--the mummy that walked the streets of Thebes when Moses was a young man."

"Nannie!"

But Nannie did not hear, for she was running to meet the enemy, a bit of a man who looked like a woodland sprite as he walked along the edge of the ravine. In contrast with the big figure that lay p.r.o.ne upon the divan, his size was really ridiculous. Had his pettiness been merely external, that would not have mattered. Small men have been known to tower as giants before us. Luther was called the little monk, and the Corsican who altered the world's map was of still smaller proportions.

This little creature, however, was the reverse of Julia Ward Howe's youthful daughter, who announced to an offending visitor that she was "big inside," inasmuch as he was made on a small pattern, within as well as without.

His petty face was all puckered up when Nannie encountered him, and his rasping voice was at its most irritating pitch.