Part 20 (1/2)
Jack looked doubtfully at Eloise, who shook her head.
”No,” she said, ”I shall tell her you have been here. It would be a deception not to.”
”As you like. And it's too late now, for here she comes!” Howard said, as Mrs. Biggs pa.s.sed the window and stooped to find the key.
It was not there. Turning the mat upside down, she failed to discover it. The key was gone!
”For goodness' sake, what can have happened?” they heard her say, as she pushed the door open and entered the room, where the two young men stood, one on either side of Eloise, as if to protect her. ”Well, if I ain't beat!” the widow exclaimed, dropping into a chair and beginning to untie her bonnet strings as if they choked her. ”Yes, I am beat. Hain't you been to meetin'?” she asked rather severely, her eyes falling on Howard, who answered quickly, ”Yes, I have, and on my way home called to inquire for Miss Smith, and found this rascal here before me. He had unlocked the door and taken possession. You ought to have him arrested as a burglar, breaking into your house on Sunday.”
”I s'pose I or'ter,” Mrs. Biggs said, ”and I hope none of the neighbors seen you come in. Miss Brown acrost the way is a great gossip, and there hain't a speck of scandal ever been on my house in my life, and I a-boardin' schoolma'ams for fifteen years!”
Mrs. Biggs was inclined to be a little severe on the two young men invading her premises, but Jack was equal to the emergency. She was tugging at her bonnet strings, which were entangled in a knot, into which the cord of her eyegla.s.ses had become twisted.
”I can swear that neither Mrs. Brown, nor any one else was looking from the window when I came in. She was probably at church,” Jack said, offering to help her, and finally undoing the knot which had proved too much for her. ”There you are,” he said, removing the bonnet, and setting her false piece, which had become a little askew, more squarely on her head. ”You are all right now, and can blow me up as much as you please.
I deserve it,” he added, beaming upon her a smile which would have disarmed her of a dozen prejudices.
Jack's ways were wonderful with women, both young and old, and Mrs.
Biggs felt their influence and laughed, as she said, ”I ain't goin' to blow, though I was took aback to see two men here, and I'd like to know how you knew where to find the key.”
”I told him,” Eloise answered rather shamefacedly.
Mrs. Biggs shot a quick glance at her, and then said, with a meaning nod, ”I s'pose I'd of done the same thing when John and me was courtin', and young folks is all alike.”
Eloise's face was scarlet, while Jack pretended suddenly to remember the lateness of the hour, and started to leave the room. As he did so his eyes fell upon a table on which a few books were lying.
”You must find these lively,” he said, turning them over and reading their t.i.tles aloud. ”'Pilgrim's Progress,' 'Foxe's Martyrs,'
'Doddridge's Rise and Fall,' 'Memoir of Payson,' all solid and good, but a little heavy, 'United States History,' improving, but tedious,--and,--upon my word, 'The Frozen Pirate'! That is jolly! Have you read it?”
Before Eloise could reply Mrs. Biggs exclaimed, ”Of course she hasn't, and I don't know how under the sun it got in here, unless Tim put it here unbeknownst to me. I never read novels, and that is the wust I ever got hold of, and the biggest lie. I told Tim so.”
She took it from the table and carried it from the room, followed by the young men, who laughed as they thought how the widow, who never read novels, betrayed the fact that she had read ”The Frozen Pirate.”
CHAPTER XII
THE MARCH OF EVENTS
”I say, Howard,” Jack began, when they were out upon the road, ”that girl ought to have something besides 'The Frozen Pirate' and 'Foxe's Martyrs' to brighten her up,--books and flowers, and other things. Do you think she'd take them?”
Howard's head was cooler than Jack's, and he replied, ”She would resent gifts from us, but would take them from Amy. Anyhow, we can try that dodge.”
”By Jove, you are right! We can send her a lot of things with Mrs. Amy's compliments,” Jack exclaimed. ”Flowers and books and candy, and--”
He did not finish what was in his mind, but the next morning, immediately after breakfast, he pretended that he had an errand in the village, and started off alone, preferring to walk, he said, when Howard suggested the carriage, and also declining Howard's company, which was rather faintly offered. Howard never cared to walk when he could drive, and then he had a plan which he could better carry out with Jack away than with him present. He was more interested in Eloise than he would like to confess to Jack or any one, and he found himself thinking of her constantly and wis.h.i.+ng he could do something to make her more comfortable than he was sure she could be even in Mrs. Biggs's parlor.
He was very fastidious in his tastes, and Mrs. Biggs's parlor was a horror to him, with its black hair-cloth furniture, and especially the rocker in which Eloise sat, and out of which she seemed in danger of slipping every time she bent forward. He had thought of his uncle's sea chair on the occasion of his first call, and now he resolved to send it in Amy's name. Something had warned him that in Eloise's make-up there was a pride equal to his own. She might receive favors from Amy, as she had the hat, and although a chair would seem a good deal perhaps, he would explain it on the ground of Amy's great desire to help some one when he saw her. He'd send it at once, he thought, and he wrote a note, saying, ”Miss Smith: Please accept this sea chair with the compliments of Mrs. Amy, who thinks you will find it more comfortable than the hair-cloth rocker, of which I told her. As she seldom writes to any one, she has made me her amanuensis, and hopes you will excuse her. Yours, very truly, Howard Crompton, for Mrs. Amy.”
It was a lie, Howard knew, but that did not trouble him, and calling Sam, he bade him take it with the chair and a bunch of hothouse roses to Miss Smith. Sam took the chair and the note and the roses, and started for Mrs. Biggs's, stopping in the avenue to look at the shrub where Brutus had received the gouge in his shoulder, and stopping again at a point where some bits of gla.s.s from the broken window of the carriage were lying. All this took time, so that it was after eleven when he at last reached Mrs. Biggs's gate, and met a drayman coming in an opposite direction with Jack Harcourt on the cart, seated in a very handsome wheel chair, and looking supremely happy.
Jack had been very busy all the morning visiting furniture stores and inquiring for wheel chairs, which he found were not very common. Indeed, there were only three in the town, and one of these had been sent from Boston for the approval of Col. Crompton when his rheumatic gout prevented him from walking. Something about it had not suited him, and it had remained with the furniture dealer, who, glad of a purchaser, had offered it to Jack for nearly half the original price. Jack did not care for the cost if the chair was what he wanted. It was upholstered with leather, both the seat and the back, and could be easily propelled from room to room by Eloise herself, while Jack thought it quite likely that he should himself some day take her out for an airing, possibly to the school-house, which he had pa.s.sed on his way to the village. There was a shorter road through the meadows and woods than the one past the school-house, but Jack took the latter, hoping he might see Tom Walker again, in which case he meant to interview him. Nor was he disappointed, for sauntering in the same direction and chewing gum, with his cap on the back of his head and his hands in his pockets, was a tall, wiry fellow, whom Jack instantly spotted as Tom Walker, the bully, who was to terrorize Eloise.