Clever Betsy. Clara Louise Burnham

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СКАЧАТЬ I didn’t have such good taste, of course I shouldn’t venture to buy ties for a man; but even as a girl I was considered to have the most perfect taste. I was famous for it, and I’m sure, Irving, I’ve tried to instill it into you.”

      “You have, Madama,” he returned soothingly, “and I think I’m a credit to you. Now come, I’m prepared to maintain that I’ve caught the infection, and that my taste is perfect, too.” He stifled a yawn. “To prove it, I’ll throw down the bone of contention, collar and all, and get into a sweater. I’m going to hunt up Hiram before lunch and swap lies for a spell.”

      So speaking the young man stepped out on the porch, picked up his suit-case, and walked through the spreading cottage until he came to his room, where Betsy was whisking things into readiness for his occupancy.

      “There! Do you smell?” she asked, sniffing disapprovingly; “just like a cellar?”

      “No,” he returned plaintively, “I don’t think I do.”

      “I didn’t say do you; I say, don’t it,” snapped Betsy, in no mood for badinage. “If you hadn’t come so soon, I’d have had it aired out. I’d like to shake Mrs. Pogram till her teeth chatter.”

      Irving set down his suit-case.

      “As I remember, Mrs. Pogram’s teeth aren’t calculated to chatter. They don’t – what is the technical term now?”

      Betsy grunted. “I do feel ashamed to have you come into such a comfortless place, Mr. Irving.”

      “I’d rather be here, Betsy, even if I have to wear a clothes-pin on my nose while unmaking my toilet. I can sleep on the porch, you know. You think – eh, Betsy, you think there’s no use trying to side-step the Yellowstone?”

      “We’re as good as there,” returned Betsy sententiously. “Mrs. Bruce says that when once you get into that bank, she might as well count on the wind that blows as you taking a vacation at any stated time; and you know it’s got to be a stated time for the Yellowstone.”

      Irving sighed.

      “I hope we know our place, Betsy,” he returned.

      CHAPTER IV

      MRS. POGRAM CONFIDES

      Half an hour afterward Mrs. Pogram, unconscious of Miss Foster’s yearning to administer to her portly person a vigorous movement cure, walked leisurely up the village street. From one hand depended a long slender package which she held away from her black shawl by a string loop around her forefinger.

      A merry whistling attracted her, and she perceived coming along the walk, at a swinging gait, a bareheaded young man in a sweater. In a few days the streets of the village would be largely populated by girls and men, all with an aversion to hats and sleeves. Mrs. Pogram was familiar with the type, and noted that this care-free person was an advance guard proving that the summer was here.

      She eyed him, however, with lack-lustre eyes until he stopped suddenly before her.

      “You don’t know me,” he said, taking his hands out of his pockets.

      The corners of Mrs. Pogram’s lips drew down and her chin drew in.

      “Why, Irvin’ Bruce, it’s you!” she declared. “We haven’t seen you in these parts for so long I didn’t know but you’d given up Fairport.”

      “Couldn’t do that, Mrs. Pogram. You know how a man always returns to the scene of his crimes.”

      Mrs. Pogram again drew down the corners of her mouth and gave her gingerly-held package a shake.

      “This pesky fish never will be done drippin’,” she remarked.

      “Been fishing?” asked her companion.

      “Yes. I go fishin’ on the wharf. It’s cheaper than to the market and the walk does me good.”

      “You look well.”

      “I ain’t well. It’s kind o’ hard for me to get around, and I miss Rosalie. She’s gone off.” Mrs. Pogram’s voice took a whining note, and she indulged in a sniff of self-pity. “I donno as you ever saw Rosalie?”

      “Oh yes, I’ve seen her.”

      “The way I come to take her, I was gettin’ along in years and she was left alone in the world. She wanted a home and I wanted young hands and feet, so we’d ’a’ got along real comfortable if it hadn’t been for Loomis; and I’ve been more like a mother than a sister to Loomis, bein’ so much older, and I do think he might have let me have a little comfort without naggin’ me all the time.”

      “Has he left Portland and come here to live with you?”

      “Oh no, he’s still in Chatham’s store, but he can run down over Sunday any time, you know, and ever since Rosalie came he’s done so a great deal.”

      “What could you expect?” returned Irving. “I remember her.”

      “Hey? Oh, yes, Loomis was awful pleased with her at first, but she didn’t seem to take much of a fancy to him. Kinder laughed at him. Loomis is sort o’ fussy. Anyway, she made him mad one day, and from that on he didn’t give me any peace.”

      Mrs. Pogram sniffed again and gave her lachrymose package another shake so that its tears bedewed the walk as if she were weeping vicariously.

      “He made you send the girl away?” asked Irving quickly, a line coming in his forehead at the remembrance of the mincing young clerk who had been the natural victim of many a prank of his own boyhood.

      “Not made me, exactly,” returned Mrs. Pogram, “but Rosalie got so she wouldn’t stand it any longer. You see,” her complaining tone altering to one of some complacence, “though I ain’t any millionairess, my estate ain’t exactly to be sneezed at. The old Pogram mahogany and the silver that was my mother’s are worth considerable; and Loomis was on pins for fear I’d give some of ’em to Rosalie. I give her a spoon once – it was real thin, Irvin’, not worth much of anything in money, but it was a time when Rosalie’d taken care of me through a fever and I felt to give her somethin’; and law, from the way Loomis took on you’d ’a’ thought I’d made him a poor man for the rest of his life. Honestly I was ashamed of him; and I kep’ his actions away from Rosalie as much as I could; but she’s smart, and she saw she’d gained Loomis’s enmity by laughin’ at him, and saw that he was gettin’ kinder jealous of her about the things; and if she would only have been quiet, and spoken him fair, and we both kept our own counsel, I could have slipped many a little thing to her and he’d never ’a’ known the difference. Things weren’t ever the same after your mother gave her that winter at Lambeth. She never laughed at Loomis till after that, and then came my sickness and I gave her the spoon, and from that time there wa’n’t ever any peace.”

      The line in Irving’s forehead came again. “Then you don’t think Mrs. Bruce’s gift to Rosalie was an advantage.”

      “Well, I was willin’ to spare her for her own good, for I could see what her longings were, and felt I hadn’t ought to stand in her way. Loomis favored it because I think ’twas his idea then that he and Rosalie would both come into the Brown-Pogram estate one o’ these days.”

      Irving lifted a hand to conceal some ebullition which escaped him СКАЧАТЬ