Ainslee's, Vol. 15, No. 6, July 1905

Miss Paysley – I wish you would tell me if you came out here with the honest intention of having your fortune told?

Mr. Jarvis (aside.) – She can give Mrs. Orton cards and spades. (Aloud.) Did you come out here with the intention of telling my fortune?

Miss Paysley (slowly) – I’ve done what I came out for!

Mr. Jarvis – And that was?

Miss Paysley (rising and turning away) – Something I foolishly thought I ought to do.

Mr. Jarvis – Foolishly? I think it was too lovely of you to take any interest in my affairs at all.

Miss Paysley (aside) – I’ve never seen anyone so insupportable, and he looks – nice! (Aloud, with wide-open eyes.) Your affairs! You don’t suppose it’s for you?

Mr. Jarvis – Eh?

Miss Paysley – I suppose you think that there is no such thing as real loyalty or friendship between girls?

Mr. Jarvis – Oh! (They both are silent a moment, each measuring the other.)

Mr. Jarvis (steadily) – Have you happened to hear of Millicent Holt’s engagement?

Miss Paysley (throwing down her hand) – You oughtn’t to ask her best friend that!

Mr. Jarvis (calmly) – To Bob Burke, I mean.

Miss Paysley (entirely taken aback) – To Bob Burke! She never did! Not Millicent! I could have sworn to Millicent!

Mr. Jarvis (still calmly) – So could I. So I did.

Miss Paysley (with horror-struck eyes) – But I don’t understand!

Mr. Jarvis – I didn’t, at first, either. It seems Bobby Burke’s soul and hers are twins, or something of that kind. So where do I come in?

Miss Paysley – But when we were abroad together —

Mr. Jarvis – Please don’t! I know I take a “lump of dough for a raisin,” but —

Miss Paysley (impulsively) – Please forgive me. I thought —

Mr. Jarvis – That I was “doing your friend dirt,” for the sake of a brazen image.

Miss Paysley (bravely) – What else was I to think?

Mr. Jarvis (gravely) – And for the sake of your friend you told me what you thought of me. (Aside.) I believe you at least do tell the truth.

Miss Paysley (impulsively) – I didn’t tell you all the truth. I only told you the horrid part.

Mr. Jarvis – And why wouldn’t you tell me the rest?

Miss Paysley (in a humble little voice) – Because I was fool enough to think you were spoiled enough already! (Aside.) How could Millicent – Bobby Burke – that purple ass. Think of throwing him over for Bobby Burke!

Mr. Jarvis (aside) – How pretty she is. (Aloud.) Life hasn’t exactly spoiled me lately. (Aside.) And I’ve been wasting time on Mrs. Orton.

Miss Paysley (impulsively) – And now if I had your hand to tell over again, I would tell you all – the other things first.

Mr. Jarvis – It’s not too late.

Miss Paysley – And I wasn’t honest about another thing. We’ve met four times – I remember them all. (Aside.) I’ve been a beast to him. Mrs. Orton shan’t have him to hurt. And Millicent – All women are cats!

Mr. Jarvis – So do I. The first time you were nice to me, and the second time you were nice —

Miss Paysley – Because of Millicent.

Mr. Jarvis – And the third time – you snubbed me. I suppose that was because of Millicent, too.

Miss Paysley (aside) – It was because of Mrs. Orton. (Aloud, with conviction and blushing.) And to-night I’ve been – simply horrid.

Mr. Jarvis – To-night you’ve told me more of my fortune than you’ve any idea. (Aside.) She’s adorable when she blushes!

Miss Paysley (still red) – I’ve been an impertinent, meddling thing!

Mr. Jarvis – You’ve taught me a great deal. I’m going to follow my good impulses to the end – beginning now. So please look quickly in your own hand and tell me if a man with a character like a layer cake has a great influence on your life?

Miss Paysley – I told you you followed the line of least resistance.

THE BABY’S CURLS

By Margaret HoustonA little skein of tangled floss they lie,(You always said they should have been a girl’s.)The tears will come – you cannot quite tell why —They fall unheeded on that mass – his curls.Poor little silken skein, so dear to you.“’Twere better short,” the wiser father said,“He’s getting older now.” – Alas, how true!And yet you wonder where the years have fled.“’Twere better short – ” the while your fond heart yearnedTo keep them still, reluctant standing by,You saw your little angel, earthward turned,Yet all unknowing, lay his halo by.Soft little threads! They held you with such strength!You knew the way each wanton ringlet fell,You knew each shining tendril’s golden length,How oft they’ve tangled, only you can tell.In dusky twilight shadows, oh, how oftYou’ve seen their light along your shoulder lie.You leaned your cheek to touch the masses soft,The while you crooned some drowsy lullaby.How often when the sun was dawning redYou bent above him in the early ray,And from that glory round the baby headYou drew your light for all the weary day.And now – you start – the front door gives a slam —The hall resounds with little, hurrying feet,He climbs upon your knee – the wee, shorn lamb, —And dries your tears with kisses, warm and sweet.You fold your sorrow from his happy eyes —(You always said they should have been a girl’s.)Half of his Eden sunlight buried liesAmid the meshes of those baby curls.

BROWN BETTY

By Grace S. Richmond

It’s all right, Joe,” said Miss Farnsworth, rapidly drawing on a pair of heavy white gloves. “You needn’t be in the least afraid to trust me with the colts. And the station agent can find somebody to help him load the wagon for me.”

She sprang in and took her seat at the front of the big farm wagon – a most unusual and dainty figure there, in her crisp white linen. She gathered the reins deftly, said gayly to the people on the farmhouse porch: “When I come back I’ll show you unpatriotic persons how to keep Fourth of July in the country,” and would have driven off with a flourish but for one unforeseen and effective hindrance. Joe remained stolidly at the heads of the two restless black colts.

“You may give them their heads now, Joe,” said the girl, decisively.

“In jest a minute, miss.”

“Now. I’m in a hurry.”

But Joe remained stationary. He turned his head and eyed uneasily a window above the porch, murmuring: “Jest a minute, now – ”

Miss Farnsworth waited half the designated period, then she said, imperatively: “Joe, be so kind as to let go of those horses.”

Joe pretended to have found something wrong with the bridle of the off horse. Miss Farnsworth watched him skeptically. And an instant later Stuart Jarvis appeared upon the porch, hat in hand, smiling at the driver of the farm wagon.

“May I go with you?” he asked, easily, coming up.

There was no reason why she should refuse, particularly with three middle-aged women, two elderly gentlemen, and four girls observing with interest from the porch. Neither was there good reason for refusing to allow Mr. Jarvis to take the reins, since he leaped up at the right side of the wagon, and held out his hand for them as a matter of course. But the moment they were around the first bend in the road Agnes Farnsworth attempted to adjust affairs to her original intentions.

“Would you mind letting me drive?” she asked. The words, though spoken with a silver tongue, had rather the effect of a notification than of an interrogation.

“Not in the least,” returned Jarvis, making no motion, however, to resign the reins, “provided you can prove that I am authorized to give up my charge.”

She looked at him as if she doubted whether she had heard aright. “You know perfectly well that I am accustomed to horses,” she declared, moving as if she intended to change places with him.

He looked full down at her, smiling, but he still drove with the air of one who intends to continue in his present occupation. The black colts were going at a spanking trot, making nothing of the decided upward trend of the road. Their shining coats gleamed in the sun; alertness and power showed in every line of them. They were alive from the tips of their forward-pointing satin ears to the ends of their handsome uncropped tails, and they felt their life quiveringly.

“There is no reason in the world why I shouldn’t drive,” said Miss Farnsworth, with the pleasantly determined air of a girl who intends ultimately to have her own way. “If you had not appeared just at the moment you did, I should have come alone.”

“Do you really think you would?” asked Jarvis, studying the left ear of the nigh horse.

“Certainly. Why not?”

“Because I told Joe not to let you go without me.”

She colored under her summer’s tan.

“May I ask,” she inquired, somewhat stiffly, “why you didn’t suggest to me an hour ago that you wished to get to the station?”

Jarvis smiled at this way of putting it. “Joe was intending to go with you,” he explained.

She looked puzzled.

“Five minutes before you left, Joe came and told me that an accident had happened to one of his men, and that he couldn’t go. He said he didn’t think the colts were safe for you. I’ve been here only three days – I don’t know anything about them. Joe does.”

“Oh – nonsense!” said the girl. “I’m not afraid of them.”

“They ran away day before yesterday.”

“That makes no difference.”

“They are crazily afraid of everything in the shape of a conveyance run by its own motive power, from a threshing machine to an automobile.”

“That makes no difference, either,” declared the young person beside him with energy. “Not the least in the world.”

“Possibly not – to you. It makes an immense difference to me.”

She looked away, although the words were said in a matter-of-fact tone hardly calculated to convey their full importance.

“Since you are here to take the reins away from me when I scream,” she said, with a curling lip, “it is perfect nonsense to refuse to let me drive. Mr. Jarvis – ”

“Put it politely,” he warned her, smiling.

“Please change places with me.” She said it imperiously.

He looked steadfastly down into her eyes for an instant, until her glance fell. Then he asked, lightly:

“Have you driven them before?”

“No.”

“I wonder why,” he mused.

She was silent, but her cheeks burned with displeasure.

“I’m glad we’re to have a Fourth of July celebration,” said he, driving steadily on. His tone became casual, with a pleasant inflection, quite as if there had been no controversy. “It will do the natives good – stir them up. I took the liberty, after you had sent your order, of wiring the dealer to add rather a good lot of explosives on my own account. They will come along with yours. It’s lucky the wagon is big – we shall need it for all the stuff.”

But the girl would not talk about the Fourth of July. She sat erect, with her very charming head in the air, and let the miles roll by in silence.

Upon the platform of the small freight house at the junction stood several boxes, a long roll and two trunks – all due at the farmhouse. As the wagon drew up to it, the freight agent came leisurely out to attend to business. His eyes fell at once upon the black team.

“Pretty likely pair,” said he, with an approving pat upon the nearest shining flank. “Joe Hempstead’s, ain’t they? I heard he set considerable store by ’em. Well, they’re all right – or will be, when they’re a little older. I’ve got a mare now that I cal’late could show ’em a clean pair o’ heels. She’s round behind the station. I’ll bring her out.”

“Of course – that’s what we came to see,” observed Jarvis, as the man disappeared. “Getting our load is a secondary matter.”

“Other matters are always secondary to the sight of a good horse,” retorted his companion. She was leaning forward and Jarvis did not miss the opportunity to look at her. He gazed intently at a certain conjunction of curves at the back of her neck – a spot which always tempted him tremendously whenever he saw it.

The freight agent appeared round the corner of the station, leading an animal the sight of which made Jarvis’ eyes light with pleasure. Agnes Farnsworth caught her breath softly and leaned still further forward.

The brown mare was led back and forth before them, the colts requiring a strong hand upon the reins as she caracoled in front of their exasperated eyes. Jarvis was obliged to give them his whole attention. But the girl slipped down from the wagon. She went up to the mare and laid a coaxing, caressing hand upon the velvet nose – a hand so gentle that the animal did not resent it. She spoke softly to her; inquired her name, and called her by it in a voice of music – Betty. Presently she asked for the halter, and the freight agent, somewhat doubtful, but too full of admiration for the near presence of beauty to refuse, gave it to her. Then, indeed, did Miss Farnsworth prove the truth of her assertion that she was accustomed to horses. In five minutes she had made love to the mare so effectively that the shy and hitherto somewhat disdainful creature was following her with a slack halter and an entreating nose. Incidentally Betty had allowed the slender fingers to open her mouth.

“Of course you are not selling her,” remarked Miss Farnsworth, carelessly, as she walked away to examine her freight.

“Well – had an offer of two hundred and fifty for her last week.”

She looked around with an astonished face. “And wouldn’t take it?”

“Why – no. She’s wu’th three hundred if she’s wu’th a cent.”

“You won’t get three hundred for her,” said the girl.

“She’s as sound as a nut,” declared the freight agent, with indignation. Miss Farnsworth laughed.

“She’s a pretty creature,” said she, “but I have eyes. How did she hurt her left hind ankle?”

The freight agent stared. “Her left hind ankle! Why – there ain’t a sign of a limp in it. And her knee action’s perfect.”

“She was lame two weeks ago,” said the girl, and looked at him. Jarvis had brought his colts to a temporary stand-still, and was observing the little scene with amusement.

“Why – she got a stone in that left hind foot,” admitted the freight agent, walking the mare toward the corner of the building. “Any horse’ll do that. She ain’t lame now – wa’n’t then to amount to anything. But I’d like to know how you guessed it.”

She was still laughing. “I suppose you would let her go for two hundred and twenty-five, now, wouldn’t you?”

The freight agent led his mare away without deigning to reply, except by a shake of the head. He came back and loaded the freight into the wagon, leaving the trunks till the last. As he was shouldering the first of these, Agnes stopped him.

“Will you take two hundred and fifty for Betty?” she asked, with perfect coolness, except for a certain gleam in her eyes.

“You ain’t buyin’ horses yourself?”

“I asked you a question.”

“She ain’t no lady’s horse.”

“I asked you if you would sell her for two hundred and fifty dollars,” repeated the girl, and prepared to step up into the wagon. Jarvis was not getting down to assist her. The black pair were too restless for that.

“Why – I’d ought to have three hundred for her,” the man hesitated.

Miss Farnsworth set her foot upon the step and drew herself up beside Jarvis. She did not look toward the freight agent. Just as the horses began to swing about, the man upon the platform said, haltingly:

“Well – if you mean it, and can pay me cash – ”

She looked at him once more, quite indifferently. “I s’pose you can have her. But she’s wu’th more.”

“Mr. Jarvis,” said the horse buyer, “can we lead her home?”

He shook his head. “Not behind the colts.”

She gave him one glance of scorn – the last of any sort he received from her for some time to come. “Have you a saddle?” she asked of the agent.

“Yes, ma’am. Not a very good one, but such as ’tis.”

“Will you ride her home for me?” she asked, over a cool shoulder, of the man beside her.

“Not while you drive the colts,” he answered, with a keen glance at her, in which she might have read several things if she had taken the trouble.

“Have you a side-saddle?” she demanded of the freight agent.

“Well – if you’ll wait five minutes – I ’low I can get one.”

As the man disappeared, Miss Farnsworth jumped down from the wagon once more. She produced a letter, and, from the letter a key. With this she opened one of the trunks, which yet stood upon the platform, lifted a tray, dived among sundry garments, and drew out with an air of triumph something made of dark green cloth and folded carefully. With this she walked away into the empty, country freight house.

When, after two minutes’ absence, she emerged again, she was holding up the skirt of a riding habit and carrying a bundle of something which she took to the trunk and hastily stowed away. She said nothing whatever to Jarvis, but stood awaiting the return of the freight agent with an averted cheek.

When the mare reappeared upon the scene she wore an old side-saddle of ancient pattern, and was clumsily bridled with headgear too large for her. Jarvis gave her one glance, and spoke with decision.

“If you will hold these horses a minute, I’ll look that affair over,” he said.

The other man grinned. “All the same to me,” he returned, amicably. “Like enough you’re more used to this sort of business than I be.”

Jarvis went at the big bridle, rearranging straps, getting out his knife and cutting an extra hole or two, tightening it and bringing it more nearly to fit the sleek, small head of the mare. Miss Farnsworth looked on silently. If she appreciated this care for her safety, she did not make it apparent. Only, as Jarvis finished a very careful examination and testing of the side-saddle and stood erect with a smile at her, she said: “Thank you” – quite as if she had no mind to say it. With which he was obliged to be content.

He silently put her upon the mare, held the animal quiet while he looked for the space of one slow breath gravely up into the girl’s face, meeting only lowered lashes and a scornful mouth, and let go the bits. An instant later brown Betty and her rider were twenty rods down the road.

The two men watched her round the turn. Then Jarvis sprang to his place.

“Load the rest of the stuff in – quick,” he said, and the other obeyed.

“Gee!” remarked the station agent to himself, watching the cloud of dust in which the wagon was disappearing. “Looks like he’d got left. He can’t catch the mare – not with that load. Say, but her and Betty made a picture – that’s right.”

The road from Crofton Junction to the Hempstead Farms lay, for the most part, down hill. The black pair appreciated this fact. They had been trained in double harness from the beginning, and their ideas of life and its purposes were identical. They now joined forces to take the freight home in the shortest and most impracticable space of time.

Jarvis kept them well in hand. If he had had them in front of a light vehicle of some sort, unencumbered with a miscellaneous and unstowable lot of freight, he would have enjoyed letting them have their will. As it was, he was obliged to consider several conflicting elements in the situation and restrain the colts accordingly. His pace, therefore, was not sufficiently fast to allow him to gain upon the fleet-footed mare and her rider, and the winding road gave him no hint of their whereabouts. He did not belong to the household of boarders at the Hempstead Farms; his presence there just now was a matter of business with one of the elderly gentlemen who were taking their vacation upon the farmhouse porch – that and a certain willingness to attend carefully and unhurriedly to business which had brought him within sight of a certain girl.

It was a bit dull driving back alone. He was not familiar with the road; it was not the one by which he had come. Miss Farnsworth had not planned this outcome of the trip from the beginning – he gave her credit for that; neither could he expect a girl who had fallen in love with, and purchased, a saddle horse within the short space of fifteen minutes, to wait for it to be sent leisurely home. But it occurred to him that she might have been willing to let the mare trot lightly along the road just ahead of the blacks, where Betty’s nearness might least disconcert Tim and Tom, and where she might now and then exchange a word with their driver over her shoulder – even that cool shoulder of hers.

All at once he caught sight of the brown mare. As he approached a fork in the road, Miss Farnsworth and Betty came galloping up the east split of the fork – the one which did not lead toward Hempstead Farms. He laughed to himself, for he perceived at once that she had taken the wrong road and was spurring to get back to the fork before he should have passed.

But in this she did not succeed. Jarvis reached the corner before her. He drew up a little to let her in ahead of him, for the road was narrow. But as she neared him she motioned him ahead, and to humor her when he could he went on, though he doubted the wisdom of letting the blacks hear Betty’s sharp-ringing little hoofs at their heels.

“How do you like her?” he called, as he passed, managing a shift of the reins and an uplifted hat. He smiled at her quite as if he had nothing in the world against her, though he was feeling at the moment that the brute creation are not the only things which need a certain amount of taming.

“Oh, she’s a dear,” answered Miss Farnsworth, in a voice as sweet as a flute. “Isn’t she the prettiest thing? She’s a perfect saddle-horse – except for the tricks I haven’t found out yet.”

She was smiling back at him, all traces of petulance smoothed quite out of her face. Her cheeks were brilliantly pink, her hair blown by the breeze. She carried her wide-brimmed straw hat on the pommel of her saddle; evidently it had not proved satisfactory as a riding hat. Altogether, in the brief chance he had for observation, Jarvis was of the notion that there might be two opinions as to what creature was the prettiest thing on the Crofton road that day.

There was not much talk possible. There could be no question that Tim and Tom heard Betty coming on behind them, and were exercised thereby. The mare’s stride was shorter than that of the colts; her hoofbeats reached them in quicker rhythm than their own. As a small clock ticking beside a big one seems to say to the latter, “Hurry up – hurry up” – so Betty’s rapid trot behind stirred up the young pair in front to greater valor.

If Betty’s rider, being avowedly an expert horsewoman, recognized this, it did not appear in any pains she took to avoid it. Betty danced behind faster and faster; and faster and faster did the blacks strain to draw away from her.

There came at length a moment when Jarvis could not have boasted that he still had them in hand. About the most that he could do was to keep them in the road and on their feet. Two minutes before Miss Agnes Farnsworth appeared at the fork of the road the driver of the blacks could at any moment have pulled them with a powerful hand back upon their haunches and brought them to a quick-breathing standstill. Two minutes afterward neither he nor any other man could have done it.

And yet Jarvis did not make so much as a turn of the head to suggest to Betty’s rider that she call off the race. This, of course, was what he should have done; it was obviously the only common-sense thing to do. Plainly, since he would not do it, there was still one more mettlesome spirit upon the Crofton road to be reckoned with that morning.

II

Under such circumstances it was nearly inevitable that something should happen. It had seemed to Jarvis, as he was rushed along, that the only thing probable, since Miss Farnsworth had proved her ability to ride the mare, was that he himself should meet disaster in some form. The black team were, to all intents and purposes, and until the cause of their high-headedness should be removed, running away. They were nearing a place which he could see was likely to prove the rockiest and most winding of any part of this rocky and winding New England road.

But, as usual, it was not the foreseen which happened, but the unforeseen. A particularly vigorous lurch of the wagon displaced one of the two trunks from its position, and the next roll and pitch sent it off. The brown mare swerved, but she was so near the back of the wagon that her wheel to the right did not carry her beyond the trunk, itself bounding to the right. The unexpected sheer did not unhorse her rider, but the mare went down in a helpless sprawl over the great obstacle in her path, and the girlish figure in the saddle went with her.