Part 15 (1/2)

”By me!” cries Ollie hotly. ”Hang me if she shall marry any other man!”

Then he says plaintively, ”I have considered her my own for a year.”

”Very well,” replies Mrs. Livingston; ”you had better act as if you did. Miss Travenion's att.i.tude to you has been one of indifference. She saw no one whom she liked better. Besides, girls enjoy being made love to. Perhaps Captain Lawrence last night in Ogden in the moonlight was more of a Romeo than you have been. He looks as if he might be.”

”Does he?” cries Ollie. ”I'll show him that I can play the romantic as well as he,” and going out, he, for the first time in his life--for he is a good young man--says to himself, ”d.a.m.n!” and then becomes frightened and soliloquizes: ”Oh gracious, that is the first time I ever swore.”

So going to the theatre and coming therefrom he a.s.sists Erma into the carriage with squeezes of her hand that make her wince, and little amatory ogles of the eyes that make her blush.

Coming from the theatre, they go to ”Happy Jack's,” the swell restaurant of the city in 1871, where they have a very pretty little room prepared for them, and trout caught fresh in a mountain stream that day, and chickens done to a turn, and the freshest of lettuce and some lovely pears and grapes from Payson gardens and vineyards, and a bottle of champagne from sunny France, some of which gets into Mr. Ollie's head and makes him so devoted in his attentions to the young lady who sits beside him, that, getting a chance, he surrept.i.tiously squeezes her hand under the table, which makes Erma think him tipsy with wine, not love.

From this they return to the Townsend House, where the party separating, Miss Travenion finds herself alone at the door of her own room; but just before she enters, Mr. Oliver comes along the hallway, and walking up to her, says, with eyes that have grown fiery: ”Erma, how can you treat me so coldly when I love you?”

”Why, when did that love idea come into your head?” returns the young lady with a jeering laugh.

Next her voice grows haughty, and she says, coldly, ”Stop!” for Ollie is about to put his arm around her fairy waist. A second after, however, she laughs again and says: ”What nonsense! Good-night, Mr. Oliver,” and sweeps past him into her room, where, closing the door, Miss Changeable suddenly cries: ”If he had dared!” then mutters: ”A few days ago I looked upon his suit complacently and indifferently;” next pants: ”Now what is the matter with me? What kind of a railroad journey is it that makes a girl--” and, checking herself here, cries: ”Pshaw! what nonsense!” and so goes to bed in the City of the Saints.

CHAPTER IX.

THE BALL IN SALT LAKE.

The next morning sleep leaves Erma, driven away by the singing of the birds in the trees that front the hotel. A little time after, church bells come to her ears, and she is astonished, and then remembers that it is Sunday, and that there is a little Episcopal church on First South Street that has come there with the railroad, and is permitted to exist because United States troops are at Camp Douglas, just in the shadow of the mountains, over which the sun is rising, and whose snowtops look very cool and very pleasant here in the warmer valley, five thousand feet below them.

Coming down stairs to a nine o'clock breakfast, she encounters Ferdie and Louise at the table, for Mrs. Livingston and Oliver are later risers. Over the meal, Mr. Chauncey, who has not been to the theatre with them, but has been investigating the city, points out some of the notables who are seated about the dining-room. Then he begins to run on about what he has seen the evening before, telling them he has joined the Salt Lake Billiard Club and paid twenty-five cents initiation fee to register his name as a member of the club, in order to wield a cue, which registry is kept by pasting a few sheets of paper each day upon a roller, and has gradually rolled up until it has a diameter of five feet, and contains the names of every man who has ever played a game of billiards in Salt Lake City from the time Orson Pratt first spied out the valley; for the Mormon authorities have refused to license billiard tables, and a club was the only way in which they could be circ.u.mvented.

Next the boy excitedly tells them that he has been introduced to a Mormon bishop in a barroom. At which Miss Livingston laughs: ”He couldn't have been much of a bishop to have been there.”

”Wasn't he!” rejoins Ferdie indignantly. ”He has four wives, two pairs of sisters.”

At which Louise gives an affrighted, ”Oh!” and Miss Travenion says sternly, ”No more Mormon stories, please,” for Mr. Chauncey is about to run on about an apostle of the church who had married a mother and two daughters.

But now the party are joined by Mrs. Livingston and Oliver, and shortly after, the meal being finished, Mr. Livingston proposes church.

As it is a short distance, they go there on foot, the widow and Louise and Ferdie walking ahead and Mr. Livingston attaching himself to Erma and bringing up the rear.

As they walk up South Second Street and turn into East Temple, Miss Travenion, who has been listening to Ollie's conversation in a musingly indifferent way, suddenly brightens up and says, ”Excuse me, please,”

and leaving him hastily, crosses the wide main street. A moment after, Livingston, to his astonishment, sees her in earnest conversation with Mr. Kruger.

This gentleman has turned from two or three square-jawed, full-lipped Mormon friends of his, to meet her. A complacent smile is on his red and sunburnt face, which lights up with a peculiar glance, half-triumph, half something else, as the girl, radiant in her beauty, addresses him.

”Well, Sissy, I am right glad you take the trouble to run over and see me this morning,” he cries genially, trying to take her patricianly gloved hand in his.

”Mr. Kruger,” she says shortly, ”I fear the telegram I gave you did not reach my father. Have you heard anything of him? Do you know where he is?”

”Yes,” replies the complaisant Lot. ”I reckon he is in one of the outlying mining camps. If so, he won't be here for a day or two yit, though he has been communicated with.”

”Oh!” e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.es the girl; ”then I shall be disappointed again?”

”Indeed! How?” says the man rather curiously, noting that the lovely blue eyes are teary as they look into his.