to female nerves after a flurry.
“I’ll come back and take you out to see the dance round the tree when you’ve had a bit of a rest,” said Jack, vibrating between door and sofa as if it wasn’t easy to get away.
“Oh, I couldn’t,” cried Kitty, with a shudder at the bare idea of meeting any one. “I can’t be seen again to-night; let me stay here till my train goes.”
“I thought it had gone, already,” said Jack, with an irrepressible twinkle of the eye that glanced at the draggled dress sweeping the floor.
“How can you joke about it!” and the girl’s reproachful eyes filled with tears of shame. “I know I’ve been very silly, Jack, but I’ve had my punishment, and I don’t need any more. To feel that you despise me is worse than all the rest.”
She ended with a little sob, and turned her face away to hide the trembling of her lips. At that, Jack flushed up, his eyes shone, and he stooped suddenly as if to make some impetuous reply. But, remembering the old lady (who, by the by, was discreetly looking out of window), he put his hands in his pockets and strolled out of the room.
“I’ve lost them both by this day’s folly,” thought Kitty, as Mrs. Brown departed with the teacup. “I don’t care for Fletcher, for I dare say he didn’t mean half he said, and I was only flattered because he is rich and handsome and the girls glorify him. But I shall miss Jack, for I’ve known and loved him all my life. How good he’s been to me to-day! so patient, careful, and kind, though he must have been ashamed of me. I know he didn’t like my dress; but he never said a word and stood by me through everything. Oh, I wish I’d minded Pris! then he would have respected me, at least; I wonder if he ever will, again?”
Following a sudden impulse, Kitty sprang up, locked the door, and then proceeded to destroy all her little vanities as far as possible. She smoothed out her crimps with a wet and ruthless hand; fastened up her pretty hair in the simple way Jack liked; gave her once cherished bonnet a spiteful shake, as she put it on, and utterly extinguished it with a big blue veil. She looped up her dress, leaving no vestige of the now hateful train, and did herself up uncompromisingly in the Quakerish gray shawl Pris had insisted on her taking for the evening. Then she surveyed herself with pensive satisfaction, saying, in the tone of one bent on resolutely mortifying the flesh,—
“Neat but not gaudy; I’m a fright, but I deserve it, and it’s better than being a peacock.”
Kitty had time to feel a little friendless and forlorn, sitting there alone as twilight fell, and amused herself by wondering if Fletcher would come to inquire about her, or show any further interest in her; yet when the sound of a manly tramp approached, she trembled lest it should be the victim of the fatal facing. The door opened, and with a sigh of relief she saw Jack come in, bearing a pair of new gloves in one hand and a great bouquet of June roses in the other.
“How good of you to bring me these! They are more refreshing than oceans of tea. You know what I like, Jack; thank you very much,” cried Kitty, sniffing at her roses with grateful rapture.
“And you know what I like,” returned Jack, with an approving glance at the altered figure before him.
“I’ll never do so any more,” murmured Kitty, wondering why she felt bashful all of a sudden, when it was only cousin Jack.
“Now put on your gloves, dear, and come out and hear the music; your train doesn’t go for two hours yet, and you mustn’t mope here all that time,” said Jack, offering his second gift.
“How did you know my size?” asked Kitty, putting on the gloves in a hurry; for though Jack had called her “dear” for years, the little word had a new sound to-night.
“I guessed,—no, I didn’t, I had the old ones with me; they are no good now, are they?” and too honest to lie, Jack tried to speak carelessly, though he turned red in the dusk, well knowing that the dirty little gloves were folded away in his left breast-pocket at that identical moment.
“Oh, dear, no! these fit nicely. I’m ready, if you don’t mind going with such a fright,” said Kitty, forgetting her dread of seeing people in her desire to get away from that room, because for the first time in her life she wasn’t at ease with Jack.
“I think I like the little gray moth better than the fine butterfly,” returned Jack, who, in spite of his invitation, seemed to find “moping” rather pleasant.
“You are a rainy-day friend, and he isn’t,” said Kitty, softly, as she drew him away.
Jack’s only answer was to lay his hand on the little white glove resting so confidingly on his arm, and, keeping it there, they roamed away into the summer twilight.
Something had happened to the evening and the place, for both seemed suddenly endowed with uncommon beauty and interest. The dingy old houses might have been fairy palaces, for anything they saw to the contrary; the dusty walks, the trampled grass, were regular Elysian fields to them, and the music was the music of the spheres, though they found themselves “Right in the middle of the boom, jing, jing.” For both had made a little discovery,—no, not a little one, the greatest and sweetest man and woman can make. In the sharp twinge of jealousy which the sight of Kitty’s flirtation with Fletcher gave him, and the delight he found in her after conduct, Jack discovered how much he loved her. In the shame, gratitude, and half sweet, half bitter emotion that filled her heart, Kitty felt that to her Jack would never be “only cousin Jack” any more. All the vanity, coquetry, selfishness, and ill-temper of the day seemed magnified to heinous sins, for now her only thought was, “seeing these faults, he can’t care for me. Oh, I wish I was a better girl!”
She did not say “for his sake,” but in the new humility, the ardent wish to be all that a woman should be, little Kitty proved how true her love was, and might have said with Portia,—
“For myself alone, I would not be
Ambitious in my wish; but, for you,
I would be trebled twenty times myself;
A thousand times more fair,
Ten thousand times more rich.”
All about them other pairs were wandering under the patriarchal elms, enjoying music, starlight, balmy winds, and all the luxuries of the season. If the band had played
“Oh, there’s nothing half so sweet in life
As love’s young dream—”
it is my private opinion that it would have suited the audience to a T. Being principally composed of elderly gentlemen with large families, they had not that fine sense of the fitness of things so charming to see, and tooted and banged away with waltzes and marches, quite regardless of the flocks of Romeos and Juliets philandering all about them.
Under cover of a popular medley, Kitty overheard Fletcher quizzing her for the amusement of Miss Pink-bonnet, who was evidently making up for lost time. It was feeble wit, but it put the finishing stroke to Kitty’s vanity, and she dropped a tear in her blue tissue retreat, and clung to Jack, feeling that she had never valued him half enough. She hoped he didn’t hear the gossip going on at the other side of the tree near which they stood; but he did, for his hand involuntarily doubled itself up into a very dangerous-looking fist, and he darted such fiery glances at the speaker, that, if the thing had been possible, Fletcher’s ambrosial curls would have been scorched off his head.
“Never
