Sea-gift. Fuller Edwin Wiley

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СКАЧАТЬ would be very pleasant for her to be with Carlotta. After talking for some time of the pleasures of the country, Lulie rose to go, and I, of course, accompanied her.

      So far from proving my boldness I walked by her side in awkward silence till she spoke.

      “Why did you let your father tease you so to-night, Johnnie?”

      “He didn’t tease me,” I returned, with Munchausen mendacity. “I didn’t care a straw for what he said, only I did not choose to be spoken of so before a lady.”

      “I’ll wager Frank Paning would not have been disconcerted,” she said. “He has more self-possession than any one I ever saw.”

      “I don’t care what in the thunder Frank Paning has; I don’t want to be like him,” I said, savagely.

      “I did not intend to offend you, sir; I am obliged to you for your escort thus far, but, since you are so incensed, will need your services no farther,” she said, very quietly, taking her hand from my arm.

      “I beg a thousand pardons, Lulie; I was rude and hasty, but so many constant allusions to Paning irritate me beyond measure. He must be very dear to you from the repeated mention of his name.”

      “Oh, no, that does not follow at all. I think very well of him, as he is attentive and kind; but here we are at our gate; won’t you come in?”

      “Thanks! not to-night. Let me ask pardon again, Lulie, for my very harsh words on the way.”

      “Do not mention it; ‘tis forgotten with me. Good night!”

      My feelings, as I walked homeward, were very much mingled. There was always pleasure and pain in being with Lulie. Young as she was she already possessed consummate skill in swaying the feelings – now by some bewitching word or look raising your hopes, then dashing them to earth by some sarcasm, or worse, an allusion to some other favorite. She had reduced her game to a science, and always pitted special rivals against each other. Frank was sure to be my thorn. A single remark, evincing a preference for him, was enough to disturb my equanimity for an evening. So, in my thoughts this evening there was pain, yet a sweet pleasure, too, in the reflection that, in our retired country seat up in Wayne, I would have her all to myself; that I could see her every day, and talk as long and freely as I chose, with all the adjuncts and concomitants of love – woods, birds, brooks, bowers, meadows and moonshine.

      Just as I reached our gate I met Frank Paning himself, hurrying up street to his home.

      “Hello, John!” he said, lightly, as we stopped, “where have you been? Over to the Doc’s, I suppose. I am getting jealous. Lulie must be looked to.”

      “There is no danger,” I replied; “you are certainly the idol there.”

      “Oh, you tell me that to blind me, but I know a thing or two. By the way, how is our little foundling. I heard to-day that your folks had brought her here to raise up as a wife for you. I suppose you wish to train her up to suit you, so she will not have to learn your ways after marriage.”

      “You heard a most infamous falsehood, then, and you can tell your informant I said so,” I replied, the blood rushing to my face.

      “Well, don’t get mad about it; I was only joking. I want to call on her; when will she receive company?”

      “Not in a year or two,” I said, emphatically. “She is going up the country next week, and will not return till the fall, when she will commence school, and be closely occupied with her studies.”

      “I see it is plain you fear rivals. I will not trouble you.”

      Before I could reply he was gone.

      CHAPTER X

      The morning is misty and damp, as father, mother, Carlotta, Lulie and I stand under the great shed at the dépôt, waiting for the car doors to be unlocked. It is very early, and nobody seems stirring except those immediately connected with the train about to start. There are a dozen or more people standing in groups, waiting on the same event as ourselves. They all yawn a great deal, rub their eyes, wish they were back in bed, and wonder how long before the brakesman comes to open the car doors. The train itself lies on the track like a great headless serpent (for the engine has not yet been put on), whose red and yellow sides are full of latticed eyes. At last the brakesman, in a blue coat, striped shirt and glazed cap, comes along, whistling the last popular ballad, unlocks the door with a rattle, and shouts “Walk in, ladies and gentlemen.”

      We crowd in and select our seats on the side from the sun, if it should come out. Father turns over the seat in front, that it may face the other one, lays his shawl in the corner, hangs up the basket containing our lunch, sits down, pulls off his glove with his teeth, thrusts his hand under his duster, draws out and looks at his watch, shuts it with a snap, and says indistinctly, through the fingers of his glove:

      “It will be fifteen minutes before we start.”

      People continue to arrive and crowd in, singly and in parties. The individuals consist of a very fat old gentleman, with a broad hat soiled around the band, a duster too short by six inches for his long black coat, and a large red bandanna handkerchief, worn altogether in his hand; a fancy dressed young gentleman, who looks in the door a moment and concludes to finish his cigar upon the platform, with one foot lifted to the railing, where he can tap the heel of his boot with a leg-headed cane; a rather rough man with a very large moustache, who passes through the coach very often and slams the door very hard, gets between two seats to lean half way out of the window to tell some one, who is named Bill, “Hello!” and to ask “when will you be up?” lets down the window with a bang, and lolls across the seat with one foot hanging in the aisle; a middle aged maiden lady, dressed, of course, in black bombazine, with a green veil, a large basket with a scolloped top, a canary of yellow and black dignity in a white and green cage, furnished with seed, sand, and inconvenient water cups; an old lady under the care of the conductor, walking very slow, with a horn handled stick, a large flowered bandbox and a white cloth bag; she wears a dark fly bonnet, which she takes off when she sits down and displays a white cap, ruffled around her face, which is very much wrinkled, and has white, thin hairs about the chin; she shows a disposition to breathe hard, and to look around vacantly from the side seat at the end of the cars, where the conductor has placed her, and to talk to no one in particular with a voice like a cat-bird’s with a bad cold.

      The parties who enter are generally composed of tall, resigned looking gentlemen, burdened with innumerable boxes and bundles, patient and pale wives, in gray travelling dresses and lead colored veils, which they hold in one corner of their mouths, to show only one fourth of the face: sleepy looking, large boys, with badly fitting clothes, who stumble along the aisle behind their parents, as if they were still dreaming; smaller boys and girls following, holding each other by the hand, each in the fallacious belief that they are taking care of the other; and mulatto nurses, carrying in their arms very white headed babies, naturally lachrymose and nasally aqueous.

      Having seen all these and many more come in, I raise the window. Everything is dripping with fog, and the moisture is trickling in little crooked streams down the sides of the coaches. The express wagon comes rattling down, and I can hear them unloading, with an occasional ejaculation bordering on the profane. Then I hear the bell of the engine as it comes out of the yard, and stews and hisses, backing down the track, nearer and nearer till it touches – then, with a loud clack-up of the coaches, everybody is jerked forward, the train glides back a foot or two, and it is coupled on. All is comparatively still now, and there is nothing to remind us of the immense power to which we are attached, except the odor of the smoke, which is rolling in black masses along the roof of the shed, and the faint singing of the steam.

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