Witch Winnie's Mystery, or The Old Oak Cabinet Part 29

Milly laughed.

"No laughing matter, I tell you. I've broken training. I haven't been to the oval, or on the river, or riding in the park but once since the games. Instead of that, I put myself in the hands of our Professor of Mathematics, and I am letting him give me a private overhauling. His motto is, 'Find out what the boys don't like and give them lots of it.'"

"How horrid!" Milly murmured sympathetically.

"He's just right. If you want to put it in a little kinder way, you might say, 'Find out where the boys are weak, and then make them strong.' The trouble is I'm weak all through, so I'm having a rather serious time just now. I shall have to sit up till one o'clock to pay for the pleasure of this interview. The examinations take place between the 25th and 27th of June, inclusive. If I go into this tournament, or even think of it before then, I lose every ghost of a chance for Harvard, and will have to take to the sea, and I loathe it. But that's nothing--if you want me to do it. You don't half know me, Milly. I tell you, it's nothing at all--why I'd give up life itself for you. There isn't anything I wouldn't give up for your sake. No, you shan't run away. We've got to have it out some time, and we might as well understand one another now. I love you, Milly; I have always loved you; and if you don't like me--why, I have no use for Harvard, or life either."

He looked so despairing and yet so wildly eager, that Milly was very sorry for him.

"Of course, I like you, Stacey," she said kindly.

"You do?" he cried. "I can't believe it. You are fooling me."

"No, Stacey; but you are fooling yourself. You would be very sorry, by and bye, if I took you at your word now, and snapped you up before you had time to know your own mind. Why, Stacey, we are both of us too young to know whether we are in earnest. We ought to wait, and we ought neither of us to be bound in any way. Perhaps everything will seem very different to us four years from now. Don't you think so yourself?"

"I can never change," Stacey a.s.serted confidently.

"But I may," Milly said with a smile, thinking of her own foolish little heart, and of how appropriate the advice she was giving to Stacey was to her own case.

"I don't believe you will," Stacey replied. "I am sure it's a great comfort to know that you care for me a little; it's a great deal better than I expected."

"Did I say so? I didn't mean to," Milly exclaimed in consternation.

"No, you haven't committed yourself to anything, but you have intimated that I may ask you again after I have graduated from Harvard. And since I desire that time to come as soon as possible, I presume I have your permission to give up the tennis tournament and go on preparing for my examinations."

"Yes, certainly. But I'm sorry for the Home. I don't quite see how we are going to raise the money for the annex. Still, I suppose, as students, our first duty is to our studies."

"Exactly. But vacation is coming and we will see what we can do for the Home then. If your mother will only postpone the time I will see if I can get the boys together in July."

The old butler came in at this juncture with a tray of ices. He was followed by Mr. Van Silver, who protested against his introducing "coolness" between old friends, but who remained all the same, and spoiled their opportunity for any further conversation on the subject uppermost in Stacey's mind.

"I've an idea, Stacey," said Mr. Van Silver. "I want you to go to Europe with me this summer. You'd enjoy the trip I propose to make among the Scottish hills and lakes. I know your parents will approve, for it will be a regular education for you, especially with my improving society thrown in." Mr. Van Silver winked as he said this, and he was greatly surprised when Stacey answered promptly:

"Awfully kind of you, Mr. Van Silver, but I can't go possibly."

"Why not?"

"Well, first of all, I'm bound to be conditioned on some of my studies at my Harvard examinations, and I shall have to coach all summer in a less agreeable way than the one which you suggest. Then I have engaged to get up a tennis tournament at the Pier----"

"Tennis! what's that to such a trip as I propose. Don't be an idiot, Stacey."

"It is really not an ordinary tournament," Milly added, with a desire to make peace between the two. "But, Mr. Van Silver, when do you sail?

Perhaps Stacey can go after the tournament."

"I sail the last of June."

"Then there's no use talking," said Stacey.

"Unless you could join Mr. Van Silver by going over later."

Stacey shook his head vigorously. He had no desire to be expatriated this summer.

"I comprehend," said Mr. Van Silver. "The Pier possesses greater attractions than I can offer, but you needn't try to humbug me into believing that tennis is the magnet which draws you thither. Tell that to the unsophisticated, but strive not to impose on your grandfather. He has been young himself."

Mrs. Roseveldt came in with quite a party from the supper, and Stacey promptly took his leave.

When Milly confided this to me,--as she did nearly all of her joys and sorrows,--I could not help expressing my sympathy for Stacey.

"Stacey will recover," she said confidently. "Men are never as constant as we women." And Milly nodded her head with the gravity of an elderly matron who had experienced all the vicissitudes of life, and who could now regard the ardours of youthful affection and despair with a benign tolerance, as foreseeing the end from the beginning.

"Do you know, Tib," she continued, "Mr. Van Silver was joking in the way that he always does about Stacey, when papa came to us; and papa said, 'Don't put such notions in my little girl's head, Mr. Van Silver. Stacey has his college course before him and may be able to quote from my favourite poet when it is over.' With that he took down an old volume of Praed and read something which is so cute that I copied it afterward.

Here it is:

We parted; months and years rolled by; We met again four summers after.

Our parting was all sob and sigh; Our meeting was all mirth and laughter.

For in my heart's most secret cell There had been many other lodgers: And she was not the ball-room's belle But only--Mrs. Something Rogers.

"I wonder whether I shall be Mrs. Rogers, or Mrs. Smith, or Mrs. What?

I'd rather be just Miss Milly Roseveldt."

"And how about Professor Waite?" I asked, hardly daring to believe that the fresh wind of common sense had cleared away the old miasmatic glamour.

"Oh, Adelaide must repent. They would make such a romantic couple. I have set my heart on it. And Tib, I believe she does like him, just a little, though she hasn't found it out herself yet. I am going to take charge of their case, and some day you and I will be bridesmaids, Tib.

I've planned just how it will be. It's a pity Celeste acted so. Do you really think Miss Billings will be equal to a wedding dress?"

"What, yours, Milly?"

"Mine? No, indeed. I don't want to be married. It's a great deal nicer not to be. Don't you think so?"

"Milly, darling, I really believe that you have recovered from that old folly."

"Why, of course I have--ages and centuries ago." And Milly laughed a wholesome, gay-hearted laugh, which astonished as much as it pleased me.

"Alas for woman's constancy," I laughed; "but, indeed, Milly, I am very glad that you are so thoroughly heart-whole. We will keep a jolly old maids' hall together, only you must not encourage poor Stacey."

"Why not?" asked the incomprehensible Milly. "I am sure he is a great deal happier with matters left unsettled than he would have been if I had told him that I hated him; and that would not have been true either."

"You told him that he might ask you again after he graduates, and you certainly ought not to allow him any shadow of hope when you know positively that you can never love him."

What was my surprise to hear Milly reply very seriously: "But I don't know that, Tib. Four years may change everything. Stacey may not care a bit for me at the end of his college course. In that case, I'm sure I shan't repine. But then, again, if he should happen to hold out faithful, perhaps my stony heart may be touched by the spectacle of such devotion. Who knows?"

And Milly looked up archly, with a pretty blush that augured ill--for the old maids' hall.

CHAPTER XV.

THE OLD CABINET TELLS ITS STORY.