Margaret Graham - The Wizard's Daughter, and Other Stories

"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 a photograph which might have been marked "Exhibit A" in the case which he was trying with himself before his own conscience. If there was in his determination to place himself right with Miss Brownell any trace of solicitude for the young woman, to the credit of his modesty be it said, he had not formulated it. Perhaps there was. A belief in the general overripeness of feminine affection, and a discreet avoidance of shaking the tree upon which it grows, have in some way become a part of masculine morals, and Sidney Palmerston was still young enough to take himself seriously.

Miss Brownell had moved a table outside the tent, and was bending over a map fastened to it by thumb-tacks.

"I am trying to find out what my father is doing," she said, looking straight into Palmerston's eyes without a word of greeting. "I suppose you know they are about to begin work on the tunnel."

The young man was beginning to be a trifle tired of the tunnel. "Dysart mentioned it yesterday," he said. "May I sit down, Miss Brownell?"

She gave a little start, and went into the tent for another chair. When she reappeared, Palmerston met her at the tent door and took the camp-chair from her hand.

"I want to sit here," he said willfully, turning his back toward the table. "I don't want to talk about the tunnel; I want to turn the conversation upon agreeable things – myself, for instance."

She frowned upon him smilingly, and put her hand to her cheek with a puzzled gesture.

"Have I talked too much about the tunnel?" she asked. "I thought something might be done to stop it."

Palmerston shook his head. "You have done everything in your power. Dysart has been fairly warned. Besides, who knows?" he added rather flippantly. "They may strike a hundred inches of water, as your father predicts."

"I have not been objecting merely to rid myself of responsibility; I have never felt any. I only wanted – I hoped" – She stopped, aware of the unresponsive chill that always came at mention of her father. "I know he is honest."

"Of course," protested Palmerston, with artificial warmth; "and, really, I think the place for the work is well selected. I am not much of an engineer, but I went up the other day and looked about, and there are certainly indications of water. I" – he stopped suddenly, aware of his mistake.

The girl had not noticed it. "I wish I could make people over," she said, curling her fingers about her thumb, and striking the arm of her chair with the soft side of the resultant fist, after the manner of women.

Her companion laughed.

"Not every person, I hope; not this one, at least." He drew the photograph from his breast pocket and held it toward her. She took it from him, and looked at it absently an instant.

"What a pretty girl!" she said, handing it back to him. "Your sister?"

The young man flushed. "No; my fiancée."