People of the Whirlpool, Mabel Osgood Wright [sneezy the snowman read aloud .txt] 📗

beau that's worth his shoes won't ever get caught in no such trap,' which is most tryin' to Lurella, so I hev to act pleased, and smooth things over best I can."

Well-a-day, it is always easier to answer the riddles that puzzle others, rather than those that confront ourselves.

Fully a year ago Mrs. Jenks-Smith gave me a well-meaning hint that it is not "good form" for me to allow father or Evan to smoke while we drive or walk in public together. The very next night we three happened to be dining, why I don't know, at the most socially advanced house on the Bluffs. When the moment came for the midway pause in the rotation of foods, that we might tamp down and make secure what we had already eaten by the aid of Roman punch, the gentlemen very nearly discounted the effort, as far as I was concerned at least, by smoking cigarettes, leaning easily back in their chairs, and with no more than a vague "by your leave," to the ladies. What was more, there was a peculiarly sickening sweet odour to the smoke that father afterward told me was because the tobacco was tinctured with opium. Yet it is "bad form" for Evan and father to smoke in my society, out in the road or street under the big generous roof of the sky. Dear little boys, I wonder what the custom will be when you are grown, and read your mother's social experience book?

* * * * *

The present crisis to be faced is in the form of a wedding,--an apple-blossom wedding, to take place in St. Peter's Church. I have been made a confident in the matter from the very beginning of the wayside comedy which led to it; but I wish it understood that I am not responsible for the list of invited guests, or the details of the ceremony, which have been laboriously compiled from many sources, any more than I shall be for the heartburnings that are sure to follow in its wake.

* * * * *

One morning early last summer Fannie Penney was driving home from town, with a rather lopsided load of groceries on the back of the buckboard. Fanny did not enjoy these weekly trips for groceries, but she did not rebel, as her sisters did; and though she had aspirations, they had not developed as quickly in her as in the others, for she was considered already an old maid (a state that in the country, strangely enough, sets in long before it does in the city, often beginning quite at noonday) at the time the Bluff colony began to attract attention.

The Penney family live in a plain but substantial house on the main road, a little way north of the village, where Mr. Penney combines farming, a blacksmith's shop, and a small line of groceries, for the benefit of his family. Up to the present time this family has jogged along at a fairly comfortable pace, only one daughter, the youngest, Mollie, having so far escaped from the traditional female employments of the region as to spend a season in New York, supplementing the grammar school education by a course in elocution, with Delsarte accompaniments. When she returned she gave her old friends to understand that she was thoroughly misunderstood by her family; also, that she was now to be called Marie and preferably Miss, hinted that she was soon going on a professional tour, and condescendingly agreed to give a free recital at a Sunday-school entertainment. At this she startled the community by reciting the sleep-walking scene from Lady Macbeth, clad in a lace-trimmed Empire nightgown, red slippers with high heels, whitened face, wild hair, and, of course, the candlestick, with such terrible effect that the mothers of the infant class had difficulty in getting their progeny to stay in bed in the dark for some weeks to come. The pastor considered that, under the circumstances, she gave the words "out damned spot" undue emphasis, while the "Watch-out Committee" of the S. C. E. failed entirely to agree as to what gave the nightgown a decided pink tint, opinions greatly varying. Some insisted that it was flesh, while the pastor's wife, knowing the flavour of persecution, firmly insisted that it was merely a pink cambric slip, as was most right and proper. But her charity was immediately discounted by Mrs. Barton, who said that likely it was pink lining, for Marie's flesh was yellow, and not pink.

However, this event was soon forgotten in the greater interest that gathered about Fannie Penney's return ride from town.

It seems that soon after Fannie left the town limits and was jogging along the turnpike, the big roan horse of all work began to stumble, then grew lame forward, and finally came to a standstill.

Fannie got out, examined his feet, soon found that not only had he cast a shoe, but in doing so had managed to step on a nail and drive it into his frog. With the good judgment of a farrier's daughter, she promptly unharnessed him. Looking about and seeing cows grazing in a neighbouring pasture, she led him slowly to the side of the road, let down the bars and turned him loose, where he immediately showed his appreciation of the situation by lying down and nibbling at the grass within reach.

So far so good, but when Fannie began to consider the possibility of walking home, with the chance of being picked up on the road by some one, and getting her father to come and remove the nail, the load of groceries loomed up before her. Not only did they represent considerable money value, country reckoning, and there was no house within half a mile either way, but some of the articles, such as lard, were in danger of being ruined by the hot sun; so Fannie walked along the road, searching the dust for the lost shoe, seeing no way out of her dilemma unless some one should come by.

She did not find the shoe, but soon a cloud of dust from the town side told of an approaching team, and she went to the shade of the only near-by tree and waited.

A moment later, the team coming up proved to be a freshly painted runabout, drawn by a fine bay horse in trim harness, driven by the average stable boy; while beside him sat a smooth-faced, keen-eyed man, rather under middle age, dressed in a spotless light suit, tan shoes, lilac shirt, opalesque tie, finished above by a Panama hat pinched into many dimples.

He was evidently a man of quick action, for he saw the girl and horseless wagon at a glance, touched the reins, stopped the horse, and jumped out before Fannie could think, taking off his hat and saying:--

"Lady in distress, runaway horse, lucky not to have upset load--can I be of any use?" all in one breath.

Fannie had never read Dickens, so that no comparison with the speech of Alfred Jingle arose to make her distrustful, which was unnecessary, and the bowing figure appeared to her the perfection of up-to-date manly elegance. Could it--yes, it must be a guest on the way to the Bluffs.

She blushingly explained the complication, feeling almost ashamed to mention her fears as to the melting lard, it seemed so insignificant in such a presence; but he quickly reassured her by going to the wagon, pulling it energetically under the tree, and spreading the linen lap-robe over the goods, the effort causing streams of perspiration to alter the stately appearance of a three-inch high collar. Next he sprang over the fence into the field, found that the nail was too firmly wedged to be drawn from the horse's hoof with either fingers or a wagon wrench, and returned to the road again.

"Now, may I ask where you live?" he said, dusting himself off with vigorous flips of a large Yale blue silk handkerchief.

Fannie told him, and her name, also, and ventured to ask that, if he was going through Oaklands, he would be good enough to tell her uncle, who kept the livery stable, to send out for her.

"I guess we can better that," he said, smiling genially. "I'm going to Oaklands to meet my trunk and stop over a day. I'll leave the boy here with your goods, drive you in, pick up your father, he returns with this horse, brings tools, fixes up his own, boy takes rig back to town, your father drives goods home, see?"

Fannie saw that the arrangements were unanswerably suitable; also, that to carry them out she must take a drive with the unknown, a drive of necessity to be sure, yet one that she could safely call romantic, especially as, when he turned to help her into the runabout, he picked up a horseshoe that lay in the bottom and gave it to her, saying, "It's yours; I found it half a mile back; I never pass a horseshoe, never can tell when it'll bring luck."

Before they had gone very far her dream of his being a guest on his way to the Bluffs was shattered by his saying: "I've got the advantage of you--know your name, you don't know mine. That's not fair. 'Aim to be fair' 's my motto, even if I don't chance to hit it," and he pulled out a bulky wallet and held it toward her with one hand, that she might help herself to one of the cards with which it was filled.

Her hand touched his; she blushed so that her freckles were veiled for the moment as she read, half aloud: "L. Middleton--with Frank Brothers. Dealers in first-class canned goods," the New York address being in the corner. The feeling of disappointment only lasted for a moment, for was not a travelling man, as the drummer is always called in country towns, a person of experience and knowledge of the world, as well as being not infrequently shrouded in mystery? As she pondered on the card, wondering if she dared put it in her pocket, he said in a matter-of-fact way, again extending the wallet: "Don't hesitate, take the deck, may come handy, father like to keep goods in stock some time. That's my regular; carry a side line too, perfumes and an A1 hair restorer. Got all my samples at Oaklands depot. You mind stopping there on the way? Want to get fresh collar."

No, of course Fannie would not mind; this last request fixed her companion firmly in her esteem. Any other man of her acquaintance would have removed his collar and proceeded without one, never giving the matter a thought; in fact, she had been momentarily expecting that this would happen. Now she would have the bliss of taking him home in all the perfection of his toilet as she first beheld him.

From that moment she grew more conversational, and his utterance became less jerky, until, when they finally drove up back of the long red brick railway station at Oaklands, a little before noon, she had not only given him a synopsis of local history, but was, in her excitement, vainly trying to recollect what day of the week it was, so that she might judge of the dinner probabilities at home, also if it would be