“WHICH — hm — ? Mean who, gave you those roses?”
“Mr. Eustace. Aren’t they beautiful?”
“Don’t lay them on the table, they muss everything so. Go take off your hat and get your sewing, Patty; I want to have a serious talk with you.”
“My hat’s off now,” replied Patty, giving the article in question so impatient a jerk in its removal that a mass of dark curls fell on her shoulders. “As for sewing, I haven’t any. The kitten tore that flounce I was hemming yesterday, and I haven’t enough stuff to cut another.”
“The flounce you were pretending to hem, you mean. You’d do more sewing if Mr. Eustace’s garden didn’t join ours. How did the kitten get it?”
“I — I left it on the seat in the arbor when you called me in.”
“Hm. What is to be done about finishing your dress?”
“I’m sure I don’t know.”
“Of course you don’t know, nor care. Certainly those that named me Patience must have forseen what was in store for me. How can you be so careless and childish, Patty! You’re eighteen, not twelve.”
“Why, Patience,” replied Patty, opening a pair of dark eyes to their widest extent, “I really never thought about the kitten.”
“You never think of anything; more’s the pity! I have to bear all the burdens. Mamma’s sickness is quite enough, without your worrying me, too.”
“Anybody would say,” said Patty with a toss of her head, “that it was you who worried me.”
“ It’s high time I did. A girl had better be talked to than talked about.”
“Can people help being talked about?” The elder sister cast a glance of irritation at the pretty face bent over the roses.
“A girl that rides with one gentleman in the afternoon, and sings with another in the evening, then plays croquet with the first all the next morning, and goes to the theatre with the second at night and so on, turn and turn about, doesn’t take much pains to help it, does she? What can people say, except that she’s a foolish little flirt?”
Patty’s face was crimson, but she had no time for a word.
“I’ve held my tongue long enough,” continued Patience. “Now to come straight to the point. Drop whichever you please, James Eustace or Dr. Wentworth, but one of them you must drop! As for encouraging both — “
“For shame, Patience! Is it encouraging people to treat them politely?’
“I say as for encouraging both, it must not go on! Whatever you meant, that’s what you’ve done. It’s just like you. You only want a good time; you never think of consequences. Oh, Patty,” she went on with a change of tone, “what a help and comfort you might be to me if you only were different! I sometimes get so tired and discouraged.”
She stopped short, resolutely compressing her lips to hide their tell-tale quivering; but Patty saw two or three tears fall on the sewing in her lap. In an instant the roses were on the floor and her arms about her sister’s neck.
“Don’t cry, Pate! Don’t! Don’t!” At this touch of sympathy, Patience gave way and sobbed outright. “I didn’t mean to trouble you; indeed, I didn’t.”
But coaxing and comforting availed nothing. The violent fit of weeping that followed was nature’s revenge for over work and over-anxiety. Finding all her attempts at consolation unheeded, the younger sister became much distressed, and even alarmed.
“Patience, do listen. If you’re worrying about my affairs, as you call them, you needn’t any longer. Look here!’’
A hand was laid on Patience’s lap. Upon it gleamed a diamond ring. Patience looked her amazement.
“I — I meant to tell you when I first came in, but you didn’t give me time.”
“Patty Graham! When — ?”
“This afternoon. Only a little while ago.”
“You seem to have settled it for yourself. How do you know mamma will approve?”
“She — likes him.”
“Likes James Eustace! Why — ”
“What in the world has he to do with it?”
“Didn’t the ring and roses come from the same one, then?”
“The roses? Mr. Eustace gave them to me over the fence.”
“Hm! He won’t care to be on this side of the fence so much in the future! So it’s Dr. Wentworth. Patty, you’re to be congratulated. Whether he is or not,” — Patience was getting sharp again — “ is another question. But now tell me”
The sound of the door-bell and a call from above stairs interrupted her. Patty peered through the blinds.
“It’s my new bonnet, sent home in time for Sunday. It’s real pretty, Pate. Wait a second and — ”
But Patience was already at the foot of the stairs.
“I can’t stop. The nurse wants me for something. I’m afraid mamma’s going to have one of her bad attacks.”
The prophecy was verified. Patience was sitting at a late and solitary breakfast, the next morning, trying vainly to drink a little coffee, when Patty came in dressed for church. The weary vigils of the night and the oppressive heat and sultriness of the weather had given the former an insupportable nervous headache. Her sister’s bright face changed at sight of her.
“Why, Pate, how sick you look! I’ll stay at home and you shall go to bed. I’m afraid you didn’t sleep at all.”
“No, but I’m going to now. There is no need of your staying. The nurse can do everything.”
“Is mamma worse than usual?’’
“I’m afraid so. We gave her opiates toward morning.”
Patty made a pretty picture as she stood silently drawing on her gloves. The new bonnet, a jaunty trifle of black lace, matched the flimsy lace overdress, through which gleamed the round, fair neck and arms. On one side of the bonnet, just above the clustering curls, were set two tiny, scarlet-throated humming birds with iridescent plumage. These, the spray of flowers on her breast, and the gay little parasol that hung at her belt, were the only touches of color in her costume. The effect was charming, but Patience did not feel capable of enthusiasm.
“The bonnet is very pretty,” she said languidly, in answer to Patty’s demand for criticism. “I wish you’d ask Dr. Wentworth — ”
“He’s at the door now.” Patty flushed rosily as she spoke, and was very busy with the last button of her glove. “Shall I ask him in?”
“No; I’m not fit to see anyone this morning. Just ask him to come here before four this afternoon, and be sure you don’t forget; for if the pain comes back, I don’t know what to do for mamma.”
Patty was gone before she had finished. Patience so far yielded to feminine curiosity as to watch the young people through the blinds as they went up the street together. She was well satisfied with this termination of Patty’s various love affairs. Not only was the doctor handsome, popular, and prosperous, but his genius for his profession and his thorough kindness had been proved many times over during his long attendance on the fretful invalid upstairs.
The hot glare of sunlight on the dusty road intensified a headache already almost unbearable. Patience went upstairs, darkened her room, bathed her temples, then threw herself on the bed and fell into a disturbed slumber, from which she did not wake till the little mantel clock struck half-past one.
Below stairs she found an untasted lunch on the dining table. Patty had not appeared. Feeling to ill to eat anything herself, she went out on the shady side piazza and began an aimless saunter up and down.
Presently, happening to glance down the long garden in the rear of the house, she caught sight of a figure, half hidden by a luxuriant syringa, on its knees in the grass that bordered a flower bed, evidently searching for something.
“Crazy child, to stay out in this heat!” she said to herself, and forgetful of her own headache, Patience hastened down the garden.
Patty rose to her feet at her sister’s approach, a dishevelled figure indeed, compared with the trim and charming one of three hours ago. Her black lace dress was white with dust, her curls were disordered, and her face was tear-stained. The new bonnet and a pair of primrose kid gloves lay on the grass beside some half-withered flowers.
“Patty Graham!” was Patience’s beginning. “Pick up that bonnet, do! It’ll be ruined.”
“I don’t care if it is ruined,” replied Patty, bursting into tears as she spoke. “I never want to see it again.”
“Hm. What now?”
“All the same though,” continued the younger sister, lifting and beginning to dust it assiduously, “I mean to wear it; yes — everywhere I go, all through the season.”
“What is the trouble anyway? Didn’t the doctor like it?”
“No matter. I don’t care for him, nor his opinion either.”
“Upon my word! The day after your en — ”
“I’m not engaged,” she said, emphasizing the speech with a stamp on the gravel.
Then, before a word could be said, she dropped the bonnet on the ground again, sat down on the border herself and began to cry as if her heart would break. It was Patience’s turn to comfort, but she was not successful. It was a long time before Patty could be induced to relate the cause of her trouble in a voice choked by sobs.
“Thought you were cruel — wicked — did he say that, Patty?”
“He s — said s — something like it. He n — never n — noticed the b — bonnet till I asked if it w — wasn’t pretty.”
“He’ll have to get up a crusade against fashion.”
“I’m sure I never thought any more of w — wearing a b — bird than a flower. I wouldn’t have had ’em killed. But there they all are in the store, and somebody’d buy ’em if I d — didn’t. I didn’t think any harm.”
“Did you tell the doctor that?”
“Indeed I didn’t. I never tried to excuse myself one bit. I said everybody wore birds and why shouldn’t I?”
“Well?”
“He got angry. He couldn’t have made the case out worse if I’d committed murder. He said humming birds were often skinned alive. Did you know that?”
“No, indeed,” said Patience with a shudder.
“Well, I said I’d never heard of it. All I thought of was their being pretty. And he said he was afraid that was the way with most girls, but he thought that they made a great mistake if they believed dead birds adorned their hats and bonnets. And I said they had a right to suit themselves. So we went on from one thing to another, till it was a regular quarrel before we got to church. And instead of coming into our pew, he stalked over to his own. So after church, I never looked his way, and I walked home with Dick Elroy.”
“Hm. And now you’re crying about it.”
“No, no, it’s not that. Oh, Patience what do you think I’ve done! I’ve lost his ring!”
Patience was astonished at this tragic conclusion.
“Where?”
“Right here. You see when I was coming from church, one of those German children up at the corner, ran after me and said his sister was to be buried this afternoon, and he asked me if he might have some white flowers. So I said I’d send what we had, and came right down here to pick them before I went into the house at all. And while I was picking, all of a sudden the ring was gone.”
“It’s in your glove.”
“No; for I was looking at it after I’d pulled them off. I’d quite made up my mind to send it back, you see; but I did wish I could keep it, engagement or no engagement. Then I got busy, and the first I knew — “
“It dropped off into the bed or the grass. Was it loose?”’
“Rather. But, you see, I’ve been hunting more than an hour. Isn’t it strange I don’t find it?”
Energetic Patience was already on her knees, thrusting aside thick growths of phlox, marigolds, and nasturtiums.
“Did you ever hear of such a thing, Patience? Think of a person losing a ring before she has time to break an engagement! Why, I shall have to buy another, shan’t I?”
“Don’t be foolish, Patty. The ring’s here, of course.”
“But I’ve hunted the bed over so many times!”
“Don’t begin to cry again!”
“I might have known you wouldn’t be on my side.”
“I don’t know which side I am on. You’re both in the wrong. You shouldn’t have worn the birds and he shouldn’t have been unjust.”
“He needn’t have said I was cruel, need he? No one ever talked so to me before. There’s the nurse calling, Patience. Do you suppose there’s anything the matter?”
“No, I hope not. Did you tell the doctor about coming?”
There was a pause of dismay.
“Oh, I forgot it. I’m so sorry!”
The elder sister opened her lips to make a sharp rejoinder. Then, seeing the distress in Patty’s face, she closed them again.
“I’ll send Ann over.”
“But, Patience, if I can’t find the ring — “
“I’ll be back presently. You can be looking while I’m gone.”
Poor Patty sank on her knees again in the dusty grass. Despairing tears fell thick on the mignonette and larkspur. Never in her life had she been so wretched. Physical discomfort was added to her grievances. The rays of the sun beat on her uncovered head. She was worn out with excitement and crying, and had quite forgotten her lunch.
But the ring must be found. She had already rehearsed the sentences that, spoken or written, should declare “everything at an end” between her and the doctor. “Barbarous,” indeed! “Vain” and “cruel!” The tears were falling so fast now that she would not have seen a dozen diamond rings had they been lying before her.
It was just then that a voice (one that she would have preferred not to hear then and there) inquired:
“May I come over and help, Miss Patty?” The speaker was standing in the next garden. Evidently precedent had taught him to expect consent, for he leaped the fence lightly as he spoke.
“Quests always attract me. I’ve a decided liking for the role of knight-errant,” he began merrily. Then growing serious, as he caught sight of Patty’s face, he added:
“I beg pardon. I did not mean to intrude.”
Patty tried to crawl out from under a rose bush, but the thorns had caught her dress and hair and held them fast. She was fain to accept the assistance the new comer hastened to offer, and when she was finally released, with a ruinous tear in her dress and her curls tangled, she looked far worse than she did before.
“This is the most unfortunate day of my life,” she declared, tears of vexation filling her eyes as she wrapped her handkerchief round a long scratch on her wrist.
It was impossible to doubt the sincerity of Mr. Eustace’s sympathy and urgent offers of help.
“It is of no use,” Patty responded rather ungraciously, sinking down, however, from sheer weariness, on a rustic seat under the shade of an oak. “I mean, it’s of no consequence, though it’s very good of you to offer,” she concluded, as an after-thought.
“That’s the correct thing to say,” he laughed; “but pray don’t stand on ceremony with me. If you’ll tell me what you were looking for — “
“Oh,” she said reluctantly, “it’s nothing but a ring. I dropped it while I was picking some flowers.”
“Here in this flower strip? I can easily — ”’
“No, no,” Patty interposed hastily, as he turned to begin a search. Much as she desired the recovery of the ring, to have that tell-tale article found by Mr. Eustace promised to be embarrassing.
“I really don’t want you to look for it,” she persisted, flushing scarlet at his look of surprise.
Then a little war of words followed. The more Mr. Eustace protested, the more Patty insisted. She was far from being pleased, however, when he yielded the point and sat down at her side. If he could have known how often she wished him away during the half hour that followed, he would hardly have enjoyed it as much as he did. It must be confessed that she was an uninteresting companion. She sat abstractedly pulling pieces of ribbon grass through her fingers and answering in monosyllables. But this abstraction gave way to sudden eagerness, when a pressed four-leaf clover fell from a little book that he had taken from his pocket.
“Do you believe in luck?” she asked; “forecasts and fate, you know, and all that, what people used to call witchcraft?”
The young man laughed, as he answered with a sidewise glance at his pretty companion:
“I believe in some kinds of witchcraft, yes.”
The point of this speech was lost. Patty was too much absorbed in her own ideas to heed anything else.
“If I could have just one wish granted, I’d ask to be made clairvoyant. Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to read people’s thoughts and know the future — and find everything lost? Do you think it would be a foolish wish?”
“On the contrary. But if I could have one wish granted, it would not be that.”
“What would it be?” she inquired, unsuspiciously.
“Are you not clairvoyant enough already to know?” was the audacious response.
This time the point was not lost. Vexed to find herself blushing, Patty answered coldly:
“You have too high an opinion of my powers.”
“Oh, for some pretext to end the conversation here!” she said to herself. “If Patience would only come back!”
Glancing toward the house, Patty saw, instead, the top of a buggy above the hedge next the street. Dr. Wentworth had come, then. Yes, she had a glimpse of him passing one of the open windows of the sick-room. To return to the house now was out of the question. She only hoped the doctor had looked down the garden. He would know, then, how little she cared for his displeasure. She became favorably disposed toward the companion so distasteful a moment ago. If he would let the subject of love alone —
But he would not. He was saying: “May I tell you what the wish would be, Miss Patty?”
She could not but consider, here, how odd it would be to be on with the new love before being off with the old, and how fine a revenge to let the news of a second engagement announce the breaking of the first. It would be romantic. If it were some one else’s love story, it might be a possible sequel; but in her own love story she realized now, if she never had before, that there could be only one hero. She picked up the pressed clover that had fallen at her feet and forced a laugh.
“I’m more interested in my own wishes. Give me this to change my luck, and I’ll go to look for my ring again.”
“And if the clover brought you another ring, not the one you lost, would that be good luck?”
Before she could answer or draw away the hand he held, the sound of a voice close by caused both occupants of the rustic seat to spring to their feet. A tow-haired, stolid-faced boy named James Schlosser stood there staring at them.
“Flowers for the sister? Oh, yes!” Patty exclaimed, while Mr. Eustace demanded of the boy what he meant by stealing upon people like that! “I forgot them, but I’ll pick them now.”
The boy gazed vacantly at the irate questioner. Patty seized upon the nearest blossoms, saying: “Don’t scold him; they’re for his sister’s funeral.”
“Well, let him pick them, or let me.”
“Oh, no, thank you.”
She felt very thankful to James Schlosser, who had arrived so opportunely.
Mr. Eustace stood at a little distance, with rather a moody expression, switching a shrub oak. He was clearly biding his time. Patty grew more nervous as the bunch of flowers in her hand grew larger. She “dawdled” over her picking, as Patience would have said, and stopped to ask the German boy numerous questions. While she was lengthening the latter’s stay by these innocent devices, fate again intervened in her behalf, in the shape of a servant leaning over the fence that divided the two gardens.
“Your sister is here, sir: she drove over with the children, and the little girl has been taken very ill. I didn’t know where you were.”
Mr. Eustace started out of his careless attitude.
“Say I’ll come at once.”
He came over to the garden bed and bestowed upon Patty’s open-mouthed follower a look that made her turn her face away to hide a smile.
“I am so sorry for the poor little girl,” she said.
“But you are not sorry for me,” he replied, disregarding the listener. “What is my answer to be? Must I go away without it?”
Patty had suddenly risen to her feet. Her eyes were fixed in dismay and perplexity on a figure that was striding down the garden path in most undignified haste. She had seen Dr. Wentworth come out of the house a moment before. He had paused on the piazza to pull on his gloves, glanced at the group in the garden, started, looked again, then leaped down the steps and hastened toward them.
Nothing could have broken up Mr. Eustace’s tender adieux more effectually than this unexpected approach. He was gone before his rival was half way down the gar-den. Patty, with cheeks uncomfortably flushed, was crowding many-hued flowers into James Schlosser’s dirty hands, when the doctor reached the spot. Without a word to her, he seized her protegé by the shoulder and marched him toward the gate, administering a shake or two by the way that caused the tow-haired youth to drop his flowers and burst into tears.
Patty was so absolutely amazed by this sudden action that she could only stand and stare. Nor did she make out what was being said. She heard the doctor’s determined and menacing tones, and the mixed gutturals and whines in reply. It was not till the gate was shut sharply on the ejected German, who shuffled away, whimpering as he went, that bewilderment was succeeded by indignation.
“I should like to know what right you have to turn a boy out of our yard!”
The doctor paused before the angry speaker. Evidently his impulse was to answer in the same tone. Instead, he said:
“Do you think I did it without good reason?”
Patty did not wait to reply. Rushing past the doctor, she seized the fallen flowers and hurried toward the gate.
“James! James! Here!”
“I beg — I insist,” said the doctor peremptorily, and staying her by a hand on her arm, “that you do not go after that boy!”
“He shall have the flowers! James!”’
“I will give them to him, then. Let me take them.”
“Pray let go my arm. His sister — “
“His sister died yesterday of small-pox, and two other children in the family are very ill with the same disease.”
The flowers fell to the ground and Patty’s eyes opened wide with horror. Small-pox! The thing of all other things that she most dreaded. And that boy, with contagion in his clothes and breath, had been near her and talked to her!
Suddenly dizzy and sick, she moved away from the neighborhood of the flowers. She was vaguely aware that the doctor was saying something about the culpable negligence of health officers and the boy’s being half-witted. Then she seemed to lose sight of everything and caught at a trillis for support. It was only a momentary faintness, and when she presently discovered this, instead of the trellis, the doctor’s arm was supporting her. In spite of physical weakness, she rose hastily to her feet.
“Do not be alarmed. Even if you should take the disease, and there are many chances against it, you would only have it in the lightest form. You must thank your sister for insisting on your being vaccinated.”
Patty was somewhat reassured. She was walking up the path by this time, still rather white about the lips and with an uncertain gait.
“It was foolish of me. I’m quite well now.”
“You do not look so. You had better sit down in the shade and let me get you some water.”
“Thank you; I do not need anything.”
And she kept steadily on toward the house, only pausing to pick up the primrose kids, and the neglected bonnet. Since she could not avenge the insult of the morning (for how could she repeat the dignified formula that was to accompany the return of the ring, without having any ring to return!) the only course left was retreat. She would have retreated in better order if she had not stepped on the torn lace of her over-dress and widened a hopeless rent. She paused, perforce, to gather it up.
“Patty!”
A great deal was said in that one word. Not only reproach and remonstrance, but love and entreaty were in it. It deserved a better answer than the frigid, “Well, sir!” it received.
“I acknowledge that I ought not to have said all I did this morning. I am sorry. Won’t you meet me half way?”
His hearer did not look up.
“Why should I? You did the quarreling. It’s only fair for you to do the apologizing.”
“I always supposed it took two to quarrel.”
“It only takes one to find a pretext.”
“The pretext, as you call it, was of your own making.”
“Was it? I should like to know why I am worse than the other women that wore birds at church this morning. There were plenty. There was Eliza Tebbitts, right in the pew before you, with a golden robin’s wings on her hat.”
“Did I say you were worse? It is because I think you so much better that I cannot bear to see you with birds on your bonnet.”
“If you think so much of me, I wonder you are so ready to find fault.”
Patty still kept her face averted, but there was a sound suspiciously like a sob in her voice.
“Am I so ready? Can you say honestly that the wearing of birds is not wrong?”
“Why do you appeal to a vain, frivolous, cruel person like me?”
“You are proving yourself really cruel. I asked you to forgive me.”
“One’s character must be maintained.”
“Patty, why will you be so unreasonable? I wonder if you remember how you cried over a little sparrow your kitten killed not a month ago, and how you begged me to tie the bird round the cat’s neck, ‘to cure it of cruelty.’ I refused because the cat knew no better. But what shall we say of the woman that ornaments her dress with the plumes of a tanager, whose young were left to starve to death in the nest? Or the woman that adorns her bonnet with poor little humming birds, which were made to suffer horrible tortures that their plumage might be a little more brilliant? How shall we cure her of cruelty?”
Patty had put both hands before her face, with the motion of a shamed and chidden child. The unfortunate bonnet fell to the ground again, but she never heeded it; nor did the doctor, who was fairly launched on a topic concerning which he could never say enough. Today, however, his eloquence was stayed at flood tide and the whole subject driven completely out of his mind by his companion’s bursting into tears. It was the mute concession of the point; but the doctor had forgotten that any concession was wanted. With remorseful haste, he shouldered the blame of the whole affair, accused himself of injustice, unkindness, and a host of other faults, and begged abjectly to be forgiven.
Forgiveness must have been granted; for, late in the afternoon, Mr. Eustace, peering through the embowering vines of his piazza, saw that his place on the rustic seat was occupied by “another,” who was talking earnestly, while Patty listened with downcast eyes and glowing cheeks. The bone of contention, the bonnet, was still lying under the phlox and tiger lilies, the doctor’s buggy was still at the gate, and the two young people had forgotten everything except the one matter of supreme importance to both.
“And you could not even wear my ring one day. Did I deserve to have it put aside so soon?”
Patty flushed guiltily and stammered:
“I — I — to quarrel like this the first day of an engagement — “
“That proves ours is true love. It never does run smooth.”
“Its course has been so rough today,” she said, with a rueful little laugh, “that it has left my costume a perfect wreck. Even my parasol stick is broken. I’m sure I don’t know why I’ve been dragging it about at my belt all the afternoon. I forgot all about it.” Another of the innumerable things Patty forgot in a day. The doctor took up the article, as Patty unclasped its chain, and smiled at its dilapidated state. The rose-colored fringes and ribbons were stained, and the carved handle just hung together by the connecting spring.
“What a little toy! I declare, it’s not as large around as the rim of my hat!”
“Ridiculous! It’s twice that size!”
“Nothing of the kind! Now, we’ll see, if the thing’s not too much broken to come open. There!” he said, spreading it triumphantly above his head.
Something fell out of the folds as he did so, something small and glittering, that flashed back rays of light in its descent, hit upon the toe of the doctor’s boot and rolled under a bunch of clover. With a cry of amazement and delight, Patty sprang to pick it up.
“Oh, the ring! the ring!”
The doctor had been quicker than she. He stood holding the tiny circlet in his hand, and looking in a mystified fashion at Patty’s radiant face.
“Just think,” she said, between laughing and crying, and with a face as rosy as the ribbons of the parasol; “it’s been in there all the time, and I’ve been carrying it around while I was hunting for it. I suppose I left the parasol hanging loose, and the ring fell into it the first thing. I never knew anything so queer! And I hunted the flower bed through and through, and Patience looked, too, and Mr. Eustace — ”
“Mr. Eustace?” said the doctor, knitting his brows a little.
“No, no, I didn’t want him to look. I — I was afraid he’d find it.”
“Afraid? Surely, you are not coquette enough — ”
“I didn’t want anybody to know about it but Patience. I was going to give it back to you, you know, as soon as I found it.”
“And, instead,” laughed the doctor, “I gave it back to you as soon as I found it!”
