The Wizard's Daughter, and Other Stories. Graham Margaret Collier

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      Two days later John Dysart came into Palmerston's tent, and drew a camp-stool close to the young man's side.

      "I'm in a kind of a fix," he said, seating himself and fastening his eyes on the floor with an air of profound self-commiseration. "You see, this girl of Brownell's she came up where I was mending the flume yesterday, and we got right well acquainted. She seems friendly. She took off her coat and laid it on a boulder, and we set down there in our shirt-sleeves and had quite a talk. I think she means all right, but she's visionary. I can't understand it, living with a practical man like the professor. But you can't always tell. Now, there's Emeline. Emeline means well, but she lets her prejudices run away with her judgment. I guess women generally do. But, someway, this girl rather surprised me. When I first saw her I thought she looked kind of reasonable; maybe it was her cravat – I don't know."

      John shook his head in a baffled way. He had taken off his hat, and the handkerchief which he had spread over his bald crown to protect it from the flies drooped pathetically about his honest face.

      "What did Miss Brownell say?" asked Palmerston, flushing a little.

      John looked at him absently from under his highly colored awning. "The girl? Oh, she don't understand. She wanted me to be careful. I told her I'd been careful all my life, and I wasn't likely to rush into anything now. She thinks her father's 'most too sanguine about the water, but she doesn't understand the machine – I could see that. She said she was afraid I'd lose something, and she wants me to back out right now. I'm sure I don't know what to do. I want to treat everybody right."

      "Including yourself, I hope," suggested Palmerston.

      "Yes, of course. I don't feel quite able to give up all my prospects just for a notion; and yet I want to do the square thing by Emeline. It's queer about women – especially Emeline. I've often thought if there was only men it would be easier to make up your mind; but still, I suppose we'd oughtn't to feel that way. They don't mean any harm."

      John drew the protecting drapery from his head, and lashed his bald crown with it softly, as if in punishment for his seeming disloyalty.

      "You could withdraw from the contract now without any great loss to Mr. Brownell," suggested Palmerston.

      John looked at him blankly. "Why, of course he wouldn't lose anything; I'd be the loser. But I haven't any notion of doing that. I'm only wondering whether I ought to tell Emeline about the girl. You see, Emeline's kind of impulsive, and she's took a dead set against the girl because, you see, she thinks," – John leaned forward confidentially and shut one eye, as if he were squinting along his recital to see that it was in line with the facts, – "you see, she thinks – well, I don't know as I'd ought to take it on myself to say just what Emeline thinks, but I think she thinks – well, I don't know as I'd ought to say what I think she thinks, either; but you'd understand if you'd been married."

      "Oh, I can understand," asserted the young man. "Mrs. Dysart's position is very natural. But I think you should tell her what Miss Brownell advises. There is no other woman near, and it will prove very uncomfortable for the young lady if your wife remains unfriendly toward her. You certainly don't want to be unjust, Dysart."

      John shook his head dolorously over this extension of his moral obligations.

      "No," he declared valiantly; "I want to be square with everybody; but I don't want to prejudice Emeline against the professor, and I'm afraid this would. You see, Emeline's this way – well, I don't know as I'd ought to say just how Emeline is, but you know she's an awful good woman!"

      John leaned forward and gave the last three words a slow funereal emphasis which threatened his companion's gravity.

      "Oh, I know," Palmerston broke out quickly; "Mrs. Dysart's a good woman, and she's a very smart woman, too; she has good ideas."

      "Yes, yes; Emeline's smart," John made haste to acquiesce; "she's smart as far as she knows, but when she don't quite understand, then she's prejudiced. I guess women are generally prejudiced about machinery; they can't be expected to see into it: but still, if you think I'd ought to tell her what this Brownell girl says, why, I'm a-going to do it."

      John got up with the air of a man harassed but determined, and went out of the tent.

      The next afternoon Mrs. Dysart put on her beaded dolman and her best bonnet and panted through the tar-weed to call upon her new neighbor. Palmerston watched the good woman's departure, and awaited her return, taunting himself remorselessly meanwhile for the curiosity which prompted him to place a decoy-chair near his tent door, and exulting shamefacedly at the success of his ruse when she sank into it with the interrogative glance with which fat people always commit themselves to furniture.

      "Well, I've been to see her, and I must say, for a girl that's never found grace, she's about the straightforwardest person I ever came across. I know I was prejudiced." Mrs. Dysart took off her bonnet, a sacred edifice constructed of cotton velvet, frowzy feathers, and red glass currants, and gazed at it penitentially. "That father of hers is enough to prejudice a saint. But the girl ain't to blame. I think she must have had a prayin' mother, though she says she doesn't remember anything about her exceptin' her clothes, which does sound worldly."

      Mrs. Dysart straightened out the varnished muslin leaves of her horticultural headgear, and held the structure at arm's length with a sigh of gratified sense and troubled spirit.

      "I invited her to come to the mothers' meetin' down at Mrs. Stearns's in the wash with me next Thursday afternoon, and I'm goin' to have her over to dinner some day when the old perfessor's off on a tramp. I try to have Christian grace, but I can't quite go him, though I would like to see the girl brought into the fold."

      Palmerston remembered the steadfast eyes of the wanderer, and wondered how they had met all this. His companion replaced the bonnet on her head, where it lurched a little, by reason of insufficient skewering, as she got up.

      "Then you were pleased with Miss Brownell?" the young man broke out, rather senselessly, he knew – aware, all at once, of a desire to hear more.

      Mrs. Dysart did not sit down.

      "Yes," she said judicially; "for a girl without any bringin' up, and with no religious inflooences, and no mother and no father to speak of, I think she's full as good as some that's had more chances. I've got to go and start a fire now," she went on, with an air of willingness but inability to continue the subject. "There's Jawn comin' after the milk-pail; I do wish he could be brought to listen to reason."

      Palmerston watched the good woman as she labored down the path, her dusty skirts drawn close about her substantial ankles, and the beaded dolman glittering unfeelingly in the sun.

      "I hope she has a sense of humor," he said to himself. Then he got up hastily, went into the tent, and brought out a letter, which he read carefully from the beginning to the signature scribbled in the upper corner of the first page – "Your own Bess." After that he sat quite still, letting his glance play with the mists of the valley, until Mrs. Dysart rang the supper-bell.

      "If she has a sense of humor, how much she must enjoy her!" he said to himself, with the confusion of pronouns we all allow ourselves and view with such scorn in others.

      When a man first awakes to the fact that he is thinking of the wrong woman, it is always with a comfortable sense of certainty that he can change his attitude of mind by a slight effort of the will. If he does not make the effort, it is only because he is long past the necessity of demonstrating himself to himself, and not from any fickleness of fancy on his own part. It was in this comfortable state of certainty that Sidney Palmerston betook himself, a few days later, to the Brownell tent, armed with СКАЧАТЬ