"Oh, I don't know," said I, uncandid again, as soon as I saw a chance to get through with it--little cat. "It seems awfully common to me. Why do you say that it's odd?"
"Because I happen to have a letter of introduction to Miss Blunt, daughter of the old--of Mr. Blunt of the Mid-Continent--"
"You have?" I broke in. "From whom?"
"From my cousin, Amelia Wyckoff," said he, "who went to school with her at St. Cecilia's."
"Well, of all things!" I began; and then, with a lot of presence of mind, I think, I paused. "Why don't you present it?" I asked.
"Well, it's this way," said Billy. "You saw how Mr. Blunt sailed into me and put me in the broom-brigade without a hearing? I didn't have the letter then, and when I got it I didn't feel like pulling on the social strings when I was coming on pretty well for a dub lineman and learning the business from the solder on the floor to the cupola, by actual physical contact. And then there's another thing, if you'll let me say it: since that morning I've had no place in my thoughts for any girl's face but one."
We were sitting on a bench. Atkins was looking at the baby leopards in the zoo, ever so far away. Billy didn't seem to miss her. He was looking right at me. My heart fluttered so that I knew my voice would quiver if I spoke, and I didn't dare to move my hands for fear he might notice their trembling. The idea of _my_ behaving in that way!
I was glad to find out that he was Amelia's cousin; for that insured his social standing. That was what made me feel so sort of agitated. One laborer ought not to feel so of another, for we are all equal; but it _was_ a relief to know that he was Amelia's aunt's son, and not a tramp.
"I must be allowed to call on you!" he said with suppressed intensity.
"You don't dislike me very much, do you?"
"I--I don't like cuts over the eye," said I, evading the question.
"I don't have 'em any more," he urged.
And then he explained about the emeute in the line-gang, and the four-hole connectors, and confessed to the violent and sanguinary manner in which he had felt called upon to put down the uprising. I could feel my face grow hot and cold by turns, like Desdemona's while Othello was telling the same kind of things; and when I looked for the scar on his forehead he bowed his head, and I put the curls aside and found it. I would have given worlds to--it was so much like a baby coming up to you and crying about thumping its head and asking you to kiss it well. Once I had my lips all puckered up--but I had the self-control to refrain--I was so afraid.
It was getting dusk now, and Billy seized my hand and kissed it. I was quite indignant until he explained that his motives were perfectly praise-worthy. Then I led him to talk of the rich Miss Blunt to whom he had a letter of introduction, and advised him to present it, and argued with appalling cogency that one ought to marry in such a way as to better one's prospects, and Billy got perfectly furious at such a view of love and marriage--explaining, when I pretended to think he was mad at me, that he knew I was just teasing. And then he began again about calling on me, and seeing my parents, or guardians, or assigns, or _any one_ that he ought to see.
"Because," said he, "you're a perfect baby, with a baby's blue eyes and hair of floss, and tender skin, and trustfulness; and I ought to be horsewhipped for sitting here in the park with you in--in this way, with no one paying any attention but Mr. Lincoln, up there."
Then I did feel deeply, darkly crime-stained; and I could have hugged the dear fellow for his simplicity--_me_ helpless, with Atkins, and the knowledge of Amelia Wyckoff's letter; not to mention Mr. Lincoln--bless him!--or a park policeman who had been peeking at us from behind a bunch of cannas! I could have given him the addresses of several gentlemen who might have certified to the fact that I wasn't the only one whose peace of mind might have been considered in danger.
I grew portentously serious just before I went home, and told Billy that he must see me on my own terms or not at all, and that he mustn't follow me, or try to find out where I lived, but must walk around the curve to the path and let me mingle with the landscape.
"May I not hope," said he, "to see you again soon?"
"I may feed the elephant some peanuts," said I, "on Thursday evening--no, I shall play in a mixed foursome, and then dine on Thursday afternoon at the Onwentsia--"
"Where?" said he, in a sort of astonished way.
"I believe I could make you believe it," said I with more presence of mind, "if I stuck to it. But I can't come on Thursday. Let us say on Friday evening."
He insisted that Friday is unlucky, and we compromised on Wednesday.
This conversation was on Tuesday.
"May I turn for just one look at my little wood nymph," said he, "when I get to the curve?"
Of course I said "Yes"--and he turned at the curve, and came striding back with such a light in his eyes that I had to allow him to kiss my hand again, under the pretense that I had got a sliver in my finger.
I went back Wednesday, and again and again, and sneaked off once with him to an orchestra concert, and it wasn't long before Billy knew that his little stenographer was willing to allow him to hope. But I refused to let him call it an engagement until he promised me that he would present the letter to the other Miss Blunt.
"Why, Dolly? Why, sweetheart?" he asked; for it had got to that stage now. Oh, it progressed with dizzying rapidity!
"Because," I replied, "you may like her better than you do me."
"Impossible!" he cried with a gesture absolutely tragic in its intensity. "I dislike her very name--'Miss Aurelia Blunt!'"
"That's unjust!" I cried, really angry, "Aurelia is a fine name; and she may have a pet name, you know."
"Only one Miss Blunt with a pet name for little Willie!" said he. "My little Dolly!"
But I tied him down with a promise that before he saw me again he'd call on Aurelia. When I saw him next he looked guilty, and said he had found her out when he called. I scolded him cruelly, and made him promise again. The fact was that when he called I couldn't find it in my heart to sink to the prosaic level of Miss Aurelia Blunt. I had had the sweetest, most delicious courtship that any girl _ever_ had, up to this time, and I was afraid of spoiling it all. I was afraid sort of on general principles, you know, and so was "out." And after he went away I stole down into the park in my electric runabout and talked to Mr.
Lincoln about it. He seemed to know. When I went away, I left a little kiss on the monument.
Billy was perfectly cringing that next day when he had to confess that he had failed on what he called "this Aurelia proposition." He begged to be let off.
"You see," said he, "she may give me a frigid reception, and take offense at my delay in presenting this letter. Amelia may have written her, and she may be furious. There may be some sort of social statute of limitations on letters of introduction, and the thing may have run out, so that I'll be ejected by the servants, dearie. And, anyhow, it will place me in an equivocal position with Mr. Blunt--my coming to him as a tramp, and holding so very lightly the valuable social advantage of an acquaintance with the family. He won't remember that he jumped on me with both feet and gave me six months on bread and water. It--it may queer me in the business."
I here drew myself up to my full height, and froze him as I have seldom done.
"Mr. Helmerston," said I, "I have indicated to you a fact which I had supposed might have some weight with you as against sordid and merely prudential considerations--I mean my preferences in this matter. It seems, however, that--that you don't care the least little bit what _I_ want, and I just know that you don't--care for me at all as you say you do; and I'm going home at once!"
Well, he was so abject, and so sorry to have given me pain, that I wanted to hug him, but I didn't.
Oh, I almost neglected to say that all our behavior had been of the most proper and self-contained sort. I would almost be willing to have Miss Featherstonehaugh at St. Cecilia's use a kinetoscope picture of all our meetings in marking me in deportment. Of course, conversations in parks and at concerts do not lend themselves to transports very well, and the kinetoscopes do not reproduce what is said, do they? Or the way one feels when one is grinding into the dust, in that manner, the most splendid fellow in the whole terrestrial and stellar universe.
"I'll go, by George!" he vowed. "And I'll sit on Aurelia's doorstep without eating or drinking until she comes home and kicks me down the stairs!" I was wondering as I went home how soon he would come; but I was astonished to learn that Mr. Helmerston was in my reception-room.
"Hi informed 'im," said the footman, "that you would 'ardly be 'ome within a reasonable time of waiting; but 'e said 'e would remain until you came, Miss, nevertheless."
I went down to him just as I was, in my simple pique dress, wearing the violets he had given me. "Mr. Helmerston," said I, "I must apologize for the difficulty I have given you in obtaining the very slight boon of meeting me, and say how good you are to come again--and wait. Any friend of dearest Amelia's, not to mention her cousin, is--"
He had stood in a state of positive paralysis until now.
"Dolly! Dolly! Dearest, dearest Dolly!" he cried, coming up to me and taking--and doing what he hadn't had a chance to do before. "Oh, my darling, are _you_ here?"
After quite a while he started up as if he had forgotten something.
"What is it?" said I. "There isn't a promenader or a policeman this side of the park, sweetheart!"
"No," he answered after another interval--for I hadn't called him anything like that before--"but I was thinking that--that Aurelia--is a long time in coming home."
"Why, don't you know _yet_, you goosey," said I. "_I'm_ Aurelia!"
And this brings me to the point where dalliance must cease--most of the time--while the drama takes on the darker tinge given it by Pa's cruel obstinacy, and the misdeeds of the Pruntys--whom I should have brought on in the first act, somehow, on a darkened stage, conspiring across it over a black bottle, and once in a while getting up to peek up and down the flies, meanwhile uttering the villain's sibilant "Sh!" I don't suppose it is artistic, from the Augustus Thomas viewpoint, but I wanted the honeyed sweets of this courtship of mine without a tang of bitter; and, honestly now, isn't it a lovely little plot for a love-drama?
"Gee!" exclaimed the Hired Man. "I was afraid you was through!"