Patty's Perversities

"I am very sorry you've taken cold," the lawyer said.

"It is nothing," she returned.

"But every time you cough," he said with mock-pathos, "one of my heart-strings snaps."

"I should think they'd be about all used up by this time, then."

"Oh! I tie them up again, after the fashion of guitar-strings."

"But a tied-up string cannot give a good sound."

"No," he laughed, "only a kind of melancholy 'bong.' But one gets accustomed to any thing."

"It is a pity," she said, "that these mortal frames cannot be made with less rigging. Think how much simpler it would be to grow like a crystal, without all 'the bother of all the fixin's inside on us,' as Bathalina says."

"But a crystal must have a rather cold existence," he returned. "I prefer our present condition, thank you."

"Patty Sanford," called Dessie Farnam, "do come and tell us how to distribute these costumes!"

"It seems to me," Patience answered, "that the simplest way is to lay all the dresses out in one of the rooms, and draw lots for choice. Then each person can go and choose, and nobody be the wiser."

"I think that is best," Clarence Toxteth assented. "I wonder we didn't think of it. You remember our bet?"

"Oh, yes!" Patty replied. "I am as sure of those gloves as if I had them now."

Toxteth had somewhere seen or heard of the fashion of betting gloves; and the custom seemed to him the acme of high-bred gallantry. He had accordingly bet with Patty that he should be able to penetrate her disguise at the masquerade. She was determined to win this wager, and had already settled in her mind the costume she should, if possible, secure.

Some time was occupied in laying out the dresses, and then the lots were drawn from a hat. The first choice fell to Patty, and the second to Emily Purdy; Ease had the third, and Putnam the fourth.

"Now we shall see what we shall see," Patty said gayly. "I'm going to try on all the suits, and take the most becoming."

She disappeared into the dressing-room, and after a few moments emerged empty-handed.

"Where is your dress?" Emily Purdy asked.

"I put it into my trunk," was the reply. "It is all ready to take home that way."

Miss Purdy was absent far longer than Patience had been; but a large bundle in her arms furnished a ready excuse for the delay.

"If everybody is as long as this," Will said, "we that are at the bottom of the list had best go home, and come over to-morrow. I'm the fifteenth."

"I'm two worse than that," Burleigh Blood declared. "And between us, Will, there isn't a suit there I can get into, but my own."

"Take any one," was the reply, "and then get up any thing you choose."

Putnam stood alone by a window when Emily Purdy returned, and she advanced towards him.

"Oh!" she said in a confidential whisper, "how do you suppose Patty could take Clarence Toxteth's suit?"

"So you've spent your time discovering what she chose," he said aloud. "That was as kind of you as it was honorable."

"I couldn't help noticing, could I?" she stammered, abashed.

"No, probably not," he answered with quiet scorn.

"Of course I shouldn't tell anybody," she continued. "But it was so strange of her!"

"She took it as a blind, I presume," he said, "and means to make a new costume. Excuse me. It is my turn."

With much laughter and fun the selection continued until all the dresses had been taken. Burleigh Blood confided to Flossy, that, when his turn came, the only male costume remaining was that of little Tim Bawlin, and that he had taken it.

"What on earth will you do?" she asked.

"I must get up something, but I am sure I don't know what."

"I'd be glad to help you," she said. "If I can, that is."

"Of course you can," he replied. "I shall depend upon you."

As Patty left the hall, she was joined by the lawyer.

"I am going to see your grandmother," he said. "This famous pension business is about settled, and I wish to tell her."

"I am glad if it has at last come to something," she returned. "I doubted if it ever would."

"I want to ask a favor of you," he said as they gained the street.

"What is it?"

"I had the misfortune," he said slowly, "to be forced to take for myself the dress Dessie Farnum wore last night. It is evident enough that I cannot wear it, and I want to change for the one you have."

"What do you mean?" she asked in astonishment.

"As I say."

"How do you know what dress I have?"

"What does that signify, since I do know?"

"It signifies a great deal. I never thought you so dishonorable as to play the spy."

"Do you think me so now?"

"What else can I think?" she demanded hotly.

"As you please: let the insult pass," he said. "The main thing is that you exchange with me."

"I will not exchange with you!"

"You will not?"

"No."

"But, Patty, just consider the talk and the scandal it will make if you wear a man's dress, to say nothing of the indelicacy."

"Indelicacy! Thanks! We are quits on the score of insults."

The costume Patty had chosen was an old-fashioned dress-suit, with knee-breeches and swallow-tailed coat. In selecting it, she had only considered how perfectly it would answer as a disguise, and had acted upon the impulse of the moment.

"It was not like a public mask," she had said to herself, "but a small party of intimate friends." The words of the lawyer set the matter in wholly a new light before her. She tried to feel that all her anger was against him, but was secretly conscious of the imprudence of the thing she had planned to do. The fact that he was right, and yet wrong by not considering the innocence of her intentions, incensed the girl the more.

"I do not see that you have the right to be my mentor in any case," she exclaimed. "But nothing seems to make you so happy as to see me miserable. Why must you be prying about to discover what dress I mean to wear at all? One would expect you to be sufficiently ashamed of that to keep from betraying yourself. But no: you cannot let slip an opportunity of correcting me, even at the expense of smirching yourself. Oh, and this is the love you professed for me!"

"Patty," he said quietly, as she paused to choke back the sobs which strangled her, "will you be kind enough to tell me what all this is about?"

"About? As if you did not" —

"I beg pardon," he interrupted. "I was not done. Is it, then, proof of a want of love that I hurt myself to save you from a foolish thing you will not be willing to do when you come to think of it, and of which you would be ashamed if you did it thoughtlessly?"

"Hurt yourself!" she returned scornfully. "It may hurt you: I do not know. But you cannot wonder if I find it a little hard to believe. But you do not seem to consider whether it hurts me, or not."

"Why should it hurt you to do me a favor, and exchange costumes?"

"The fact that you know what costume I have hurts me. I do not enjoy finding I have been deceived in my friends."

"The faith you have in your friends cannot be very robust to be so easily shaken."

"Thank you again. I am unfortunately accustomed to believe my senses."

"As you please," he said coldly, holding open the gate for her to enter. "But you have not answered my question."

"What question?"

"Will you do me the favor of exchanging dresses with me?"

"I have answered that."

"But you must reconsider."

"Must!" she flashed out, – "must! You have no right to say must to me, thank Heaven! and you never will have!"

"You will say it to yourself in this case," he said, pale and self-contained.

"If I do, I shall not need your interference."

She turned her back upon him, and walked between the leafless shrubs towards the house, setting her heels determinedly upon the walk. It was not until she had entered the door that she remembered his errand to her grandmother; and by that time he had taken the path across the orchard to his home.

"I have done it now," he muttered to himself. "The society of women will make a fool of the most sensible of men. But what an ass I was to set to work so clumsily! I wish Emily Purdy were in Tophet!"

CHAPTER XXXI

AUNT JEFF REMONSTRATES

"If it makes you feel bad to have me cross," Patty said one morning, in answer to a remonstrance of Flossy's, "think how much worse it is for me to be cross. I have to endure my own company all the time, you know."

"Well, Patty-pat," Flossy answered meditatively, "be happy and you'll be virtuous. And that reminds me of Bathalina's room. Don't you think that when it's papered – aunt Britann, didn't you say it was to be done this week? – it might have a frieze, or a dado, or something, of mottoes?"

"Of mottoes?"

"Yes. I've thought up some lovely ones. 'A woman is known by the company she forsakes' is a good one. Then, 'The early bird dreads the fire,' – you know how she hates to get up and build the fire."

"Water is more her element," said Will. "Can't you have —

'Bonnet and featherShe'll wash together!'

or something of that kind?"

"Oh, no! That isn't good. 'Be virtuous and you'll be disagreeable' might do; and 'Marry in haste, and separate at leisure.' I'll think up plenty of mottoes, aunt Britann, if you'll have them put on her walls."

"There comes her aunt Thomas Jefferson Gooch, at your service," Will said, glancing from the window. "There must be a storm in the air to bring her over so early."

He was right. Mrs. Gooch had come over to remonstrate with her niece upon her relations to her husband.

"I couldn't rest, Bathalina," she said, "after hearing that that unfacalized critter was round here again, for I knew just what a fool you be. And it ain't no way respectable to have an intermittent husband, always comin' an' goin,' like the old woman's soap. 'Tain't what our folks has been used to. He's got all your money, hain't he? I'm sure I don't see what more he wants. You let him have every copper you had in the bank, I'll be bound."

"Well," retorted Mrs. Mixon, "what if I did? I put that money by for a rainy day, didn't I? an' when it come, I spent it."

"Lawful sakes! I hope you didn't put it by for Peter Mixin's rainy days! As I told your cousin Huldy, he's one of them folks that makes a dreadful cheerful funeral."

"Dear me!" exclaimed Bathalina, in her confusion wetting her finger, and putting it to the water in the boiler to see if it were hot enough to sizzle, like a hot iron. "How confusin' you are, aunt Jeff! 'Restless mortals toil for nought,' as the hymn says; and you're one of 'em."

"I should think I was!" retorted aunty Jeff. "But I tell you ours is a respectable family, and such culch as Peter Mixup was never brought into it before; to say nothing of having a husband bobbing after you like the tail of a kite, now here and now there!"

"Gracious!" exclaimed her niece fiercely. "How you go on! Don't get me mad, or my sinful pride'll be too much for me."

"Sinful fiddlesticks! If you had any pride, you wouldn't have that rag-tag-and-bobtail, Tom-Dick-and-Harry sort of a husband round you!"

"I shall go mad!" cried Bathalina, with an awful shrillness in her tones. "You'll make me go a raving lunacy!"

"You are one now!" screamed her aunt. "You always was."

Instead of replying, Bathalina seized the rolling-pin, and began to roll the pie-crust she was making with a vigor which bespoke the conflict within. At the same time she burst out into her favorite song, —

"'Tortured in body, and condemned in spirit,No sweet composure'" —

"I always hide the rolling-pin from my pastry," broke in aunt Jeff with cutting emphasis. "Pie-crust is like millinery, the less it is handled, the better."

"Sinful sakes!" exclaimed her niece, throwing down the rolling-pin. "I try to live as I'll wish I had when I stand round my dying-bed; but if you come here to fight, we'll just make a business of that, and let other things go. But if you come peaceable, you just keep your tongue still."

"Well, well," the visitor said, somewhat startled, "we won't quarrel. But what is Peter Mixer dangling round here for?"

"Something or other between him and Frank Breck," Bathalina said evasively. "I never asked him; for I found I couldn't get it out of him, though I've tried more'n forty different ways."

"But what's he taking up with you again for?"

"Me?" demanded the other indignantly. "Ain't I his wife? Besides, he says Hannah wants to make up with me, and leave me her property."

"Her property! Where'd she get any?"

"Well," Bathalina answered with an air of profound mystery, which in reality arose from profound ignorance, "Hannah may not have been all she ought to be, an' I ain't sayin' she has. But she may have property for all that. And, since her daughter ran off with that Brown of Samoset, Hannah's set agin her, and Peter's talked her over to consider me. And if she does, – as why shouldn't she? – if she does" —

"Nonsense!" interrupted aunty Jeff sardonically. "Ef she does! Ef is a crooked letter. And I thought our family was done with that Hannah Clemens, or Smithers, or whatever she calls herself. I'm sure I cast her off the day she went off with old Mullen."

With which conclusion she gathered herself together, and departed.

On the afternoon of this same day Burleigh Blood came to take council with Flossy about his masquerade dress. In Montfield the young people were thrown upon their own resources for costumes to be used in theatricals or fancy-dress parties. Burleigh, motherless from boyhood, and having no sisters, was forced to take Miss Plant at her word, and come to her for aid on this occasion, being, if the truth were told, but too glad to do so. The brawny fellow, with his magnificent chest and his deep voice, was as ardently in love with this sallow morsel of humanity as if she had been as like Brunhilde as he like Siegfried. Her odd ways and harmless affectations were to him inexpressibly droll and charming. He had at first been thrown into her society by the caprice of Patty, who amused herself by playing upon the diffidence of her suitor. It was not long before Patty began to suspect that this clear-eyed giant had somehow touched her cousin's heart, which proved large enough to contain him, despite her tiny person. Visions of matchmaking danced rainbow-like before the eyes of Patty, and she contrived that her quondam lover and her cousin should constantly be thrown together; or, more exactly, she fancied she managed what would in any case have come about. Later her own affairs had engrossed her so completely, that she hardly even noticed how matters stood with Flossy.

"I am sure I do not know what to wear," Burleigh said, when he and Flossy were alone together in Mrs. Sanford's parlor. "It is such a bother to get up a rig!"

"I've thought it all out," Flossy answered. "You wear this long frock, you know, and it will disguise your figure, and oh! monks do have such good things to eat! This will do finely, don't you think?"

Her friend had not the least idea of her meaning, and only stared.

"It could be made of black cambric," Flossy continued; "and I'll lend you a rosary, and you'll want an old rope to gird it in. You'll make a magnificent monk."

"Oh! you mean me to dress as a monk."

"Of course. Didn't I say so? Sometimes folks don't understand me, but I'm sure I don't see why. Of course I can't help that."

"No, of course not," he assented. "But how shall I get this robe?"

"Bring me the cloth, and I'll make it. Grandmother will help me."

"It is too bad for you to have so much trouble."

"Pooh! It's no bother. I'm sure I shall be glad to do it; and, besides, I shall know you."

"That's so!" he said. "What are you going to wear?"

"Do you think I'd tell?"

"It is only fair you should, for you'll know me. Besides, I can never find out anybody."

"Well," Flossy said in a sudden burst of confidence, "I'll tell you something. Ease and Will – no, I won't tell that, for I promised not to, and you mustn't mention it if I did. But I'm going to wear the dress Ease wore in 'The Country Wooing.'"

"Was it red?"

"Red? No, indeed! You never know any thing about what a girl has on."

"I know I don't. I don't look at them enough."

"More likely," she retorted, "you look at the wearers, and not at the dresses."

"No: only at you."

Let no reader suppose Burleigh was complimenting: he was only telling the simple truth. Flossy blushed a little at his earnest frankness.

"You'd better look at Patty," she said. "She's ever so much prettier."

"I suppose she must be," he responded naïvely; "but I'd rather look at you. I hope you don't mind."

"Oh, not in the least! Why should I? But this is all wool-gathering. Let's arrange about your suit."

"But you haven't told me what your dress is."

"It's a white lute-string."

"Lute-string?"

"Yes, of course," she said, laughing at his puzzled face. "This old-fashioned soft silk."

"Oh! I thought lute-string" —

"Would be like a guitar-string, I suppose; but it isn't. Don't you remember the dress? It had a square corsage" —

"You'd better not tell me any more. It's an old-fashioned soft silk, and it's white. That is all I could remember. I shouldn't know a square corsage from – from a square handspike."

The friendship between Flossy and Burleigh ripened rapidly over that monk's garb. She assumed great airs of superiority and authority over him, which pleased Burleigh marvellously. She climbed into a chair to fit the robe over his shoulders, boxing his ears when he insisted upon turning around that he might see her; being at last forced to compromise by letting him face the mirror, and gaze rapturously at the image of her petite person and pale face. But at last Flossy got so embarrassed, that she declared she must at once be satisfied about the weather, and led him off to consult Mrs. Sanford.

"Of course it will be pleasant next Tuesday evening," Mrs. Sanford decided after a consultation with her beloved "Old Farmer's Almanac." "The moon quarters in the west at seven o'clock that very night. I wish," she continued with a sigh, as she returned the almanac to its place, "that we didn't have to change almanacs every year. I just get all my accounts down in one, and its year's gone by. And then I'd like to keep an almanac for association's sake; but I suppose it wouldn't be much good the second year. Things do pass away so in this world!"

CHAPTER XXXII

HEADS AND TAILS

The day of the masquerade came, and a more sombre mortal than was Patience Sanford the sun did not shine upon. The resolve to wear the costume she had chosen cost her many a bitter pang. She endeavored to persuade herself that self-respect required this assertion of her independence of control, yet by this very decision it sank like the mercury upon a winter's night. She said to herself, that, had Tom requested her not to wear the dress, she would gladly have yielded; but that his assumption of deliberate indelicacy on her part, and his overbearing way of correcting her, were insolences not to be endured. There was little meekness about Patty's love. As yet it was a flame that scorched rather than warmed. But she was as true as steel, and the fire within would in time work to her finer tempering.

Riding with her father the morning of this day, Patty saw Peter Mixon accompany Tom Putnam into the office of the latter; and she fell to wondering deeply what could be the occasion of so strange a companionship. Had she entered with them unperceived, she might have heard the following conversation: —

"What is up between you and Frank?" the lawyer asked. "You are together a good deal. What sort of a hold have you on him?"

"Hold on him?" echoed the other. "I hain't got no hold on him. We've been gunning together some. He got kind o' used to me when he was a little feller. He always had more sconce than Hazard. Hazard's too almighty good for me. I like a feller's got some devil in him."

"I think likely," Putnam answered. "What is your hold on him?"

"I tell you I hain't got none."

"You may as well carry your lies somewhere else," the lawyer said coolly. "They are wasted on me."

"You was always d – d hard on me," Mixon said after a moment of sullen silence. "You don't take no account o' your family's spoilin' me. I was straight as a Christian before Breck got hold o' me. 'Tain't no fair twittin' on facts gener'ly; but you don't seem to remember that I know your brother-in-law wrote your name once, an' there warn't never nothin' done about it."

"Now you speak of it," returned the other unmoved, "I remember that Peter Mixon witnessed it. It seems to me rather longer than it is broad; for Breck is dead, and Mixon is living."

"But Breck's family ain't dead. You won't bedaub them in a hurry, I'm thinkin'; and you can't touch me 'thout you do them."

"We talked this all over when Breck died," Putnam said. "It will hardly pay to go over it again now. I want to know just what you and Frank are at."

"'Tain't nothin' that concerns you," the man said, sullenly yielding. "'Tain't nothin' but a paper his father gave me to keep, and he wants it."

"To keep for whom?"

"To keep for – for myself of course. 'Tain't at all likely he'd give me a paper for any one else."

"No, it is not," the lawyer remarked impartially; "and that is why I think you stole it."

"D – n you!" began Mixon, "I'm no more of a thief than Breck was. I'll" —

"There," Putnam interrupted, "that will do. Keep still, and let me see this paper, whatever it is."

"I hain't got it with me."

"Nonsense! Let me see it."

"I hain't got it here, I tell yer. You never take no stock in nothin' I say, seems to me."

"That's true. What is this paper? and how came you by it?"

"He give it to me the night before he died. That old maid Mullen wanted to get it, but Breck he give it to me. 'You've always been a faithful frien' to me,' says he, 'an' you shall have it.' An' then he give it to me."

The lawyer looked at him with mingled amusement and disgust. Perfectly aware that the man was lying, he tried to decide upon what slight foundation of fact had been built this touching death-bed fiction. In his own mind Putnam connected this mysterious paper with the anxiety of his nephew Frank to force Ease Apthorpe to marry him, the mention of Miss Mullen's name giving to this some plausibility. Suddenly a new thought flashed through his mind.

"Is Mrs. Smithers mixed up in this business?" he asked.

Mixon, evidently startled, denied this so strongly, that his questioner was positive he had hit the truth, and insisted upon seeing the mysterious document. Peter stuck to his assertion that he did not have it with him, but at length promised to bring it on the following day for Putnam's inspection. And with this the lawyer was forced to content himself.

On the afternoon of this same day a pleasant little scene was enacted in the chamber of Burleigh Blood, that young man being at once actor and audience.

He had been trying on the dress he was to wear that evening, and his thoughts naturally turned from the robe to its maker. In his fancy rose a picture of the little maiden seated by his own fireside, or flitting about the house as its mistress. He felt his bosom glow, thinking how dear to him would be the traces of her presence, the sound of her voice. His heart grew warm with sweet languors at the dream of clasping her in his arms, of resting that tiny blonde head upon his breast. There is something inexpressibly touching in the love of a strong, pure man. Burleigh neither analyzed nor understood his own passion; but in manly, noble fashion, he loved Flossy with all the strength of his big heart.

"I wonder," Burleigh mused, "if she would be angry if I asked her to marry me; or if she'd have me. She'd be a fool if she did! she knows so much, and is so used to great people! I suppose it is no use to bother my head for what I can't have. But I want her; and she's been very good to me; and perhaps – perhaps she wouldn't really say no. I'm a fool to lose the chance by being afraid to speak! Confound it! a woman's no right to be angry with a fellow for being in love with her. He can't help it, I suppose. I'm sure I can't. Besides I've heard her say she'd like to live in Montfield all her life."