“Den I reckin, sir, you air er furiner inter the bargin.”

“No, sir; not a foreigner either, though I was educated abroad—partly.”

“Dat’s it,” ejaculated the old man, triumphantly. “Eddicashun is the thing what plays the Ole Harry wid the onderstan’in’. Dar is my little Mell, dar, when she war er chit of er gal, an’ knowed nuthin’ ’bout the things writ down in books, she war er mighty smart gal. She had a onderstan’in’ of plain English, mity near es good es mine, an’ she could keep house, an’ make butter, an’ look arter farm bizniss in gin’ral, not ter say nuthin’ ’bout sowin’ her own cloes; an’ now, bless God! arter gittin’ er fine eddicashun, she don’t know the diffrance ’tween er hoss an’ er mule, or er bull an’ er heifer; an’ she’d no mo’ let yer ketch ’er wid er broom in her han’, or er common word on her lips dan steal er chickin! Es fur es my experance goes, nuthin’ spiles er gal like high schoolin’. I purt myself ter a heap er trouble, young man, ter edicate my only darter, but I’d purt myself ter er long site mo’, ter onedicate ’er, ef I know’d how!”

“The reason I axed ef yer wuz er cattle dealer,” he proceeded, “is dis. You ’pears ter be in the habit er comin’ hur every mornin’ ter see our fine Jersey. She’s er regular beauty, ain’t she?”

“She is—worth coming to see; but since you press the point, I feel called upon to disavow coming here for any such purpose.”

Here Mr. Devonhough turned his contemplative glance from the direction of Suke’s charms, and fixed it mischievously upon Mell who, having already, since the beginning of this interview, looked into the four quarters of the globe, now dropped her eyes in search of the mysteries beneath it.

“To be honest wid ye,” admitted old Creecy, “I didn’t ’low ye wuz arter Suke, ezzactly, but I sorter reckin’d ef yer’d come ter see Mell, it’s the front do’ yer’d er knockt at, es I ust ter do when I went er courtin’ my gal—Mell’s mammy—an’ had it out comferterble in the parler. We has er very nice home up dar on the hill, with er whole lot er fine furnisher in the front room, which Mell never rested ’till I went in debt ter buy. Now its mos’ paid fur, an’ I kinder ’low Mell ’ud be glad ter see yer mos’ enny time.”

“Thank you,” responded Mr. Devonhough, with frigidity.

“He mought go now, Mell, ef yer’d ax him.”

“Not to-day, thank you,” turning to Mell, with more graciousness of manner. “In fact, I have not yet breakfasted;” and he abruptly bowed adieu, and made his escape.

He was quite out of sight before father or daughter addressed a word to each other. At length the old farmer demanded roughly of the girl “What in the tarnation she wuz er blubberin’ erbout?”

“What, indeed!” sobbed Mell, in a frenzy of passion, and with eyes of storm. “I have good cause to cry. What else can I do? I can’t say Damn!”

“Hush your mouth,” screamed the daughter, beside herself with rage; “I don’t want him damned!”

“You don’t! Then who?”

Mell, wrought up to the highest pitch of exasperation, made no reply beyond looking daggers and gnashing her teeth.

“Not your old dad, Mell?”

“No, father; I don’t want you damned either. But what did you come down here for? What did you call him a cattle dealer for? What did you talk about such horrid, nasty, disgusting things, for? Oh! I am mortified almost to death.”

“I sorter reckon’d yer’d hate it worser’n pisen,” chuckled the old farmer; “but er good dose of pisen is jess what some folks needs bad. Come, come, Mell, hold your horses! It’s your eddicashun what’s er botherin’ of yer!”

“I wish to God I had no education!” exclaimed Mell, passionately. “It’s turned out to be the worst thing I ever did do, to get an education! It has made me unhappy ever since I came home and found things so different from what they ought to be. How poor and mean a home it is! How lowly its surroundings, how rude its ways and how I am degraded and fettered and hampered and looked down upon for things beyond my control!”

“I knows—I knows”—answered her old father, with that suspicious thrill-in-the-voice of a subjugated parent. “It’s yo’ ignerront ole daddy an’ yo’ hard-workin’ ole mammy what’s er hamperin’ ye! We ain’t got no loving little Mell, no longer, to say, Popsy and Mamsy, so cute, but only er fine young miss, who minces out ‘father’ and ‘mother’ so gran’, an’ can’t hardly abide us, the mammy what bare her, and the daddy what give her bein’. I knows. Ef it warnt fer us, ye’d be the ekill of the finess’ lady in the lan’, wouldn’t ye, Mell? Wall, ye kin be, my darter, in spite o’ us, ef you play yo’ kerds rite. You’se got es big er forshun es Miss Rutlan’—bigger, I believe. Hern’s in her pockit, yourn’s in yo’ phiz. But, arter all, a gal’s purty face don’t ’mount ter mor’n one row er pins, ef she ain’t got no brains to hope it erlong. Play yo’ purty face, Mell; play her heavy, but back her strong wid gumshun! Then you’ll git ter be er gran’ lady o’ fashion, in spite o’ yer ugly ole dad an’ common ole mammy. Now, I wants ye ter tell me somethin’ ’bout dat young jackanapes. What’s his bizniss? What is he?”

“A perfect gentleman!”

“Sartingly—sartingly. I seed dat, as soon es I sot my eyes on ’im, but what sorter man? My ole dad ust ter say, ’one fust-rate man could knock inter blue blazes er whole cart load er gentlemin’. I’ll tell yer fer er fack, er gentlemin ain’t nothin’ nohow, but er man wid his dirty spots whitewasht. But what air the import er this one’s intentions respectin’ of ye?”

Whatever her ideas on this point, the girl was too modest to express them.

“Wall, maybe you kin tell me the dispersition of your own min’ regardin’ him?”

“Yes, I can do that,” she replied with alacrity. “Make up your mind to it. I’m going marry him just as soon as he asks me. And the sooner the better!”

“Exactly! But when is he gwine ter?”

“How do I know, father?”

“I kin tell ye, Mell. Never!”

“You don’t know one thing about it—not a thing!”

“Sartingly not! It’s the young uns these days what knows everything, an’ the ole ones what dont know nuthin’. But yo’ ole dad knows what he’s talkin’ ’bout. The likes o’ him will never marry any gal who puts herself on footin’ wid er cow. Does yer reckin Miss Rutlan’ would excep’ his visits in er cornfiel’, and let him make so free?”

“It only happened so, father.”

“Hump! It’s happen’d so er good many times, es I happen ter know. Happenin’ things don’t come roun’ so reg’ler, Mell. See hur, my gal, ’tain’t no use argufyin’ wid me on the subjec’. I ain’t got nary objecshun ergin yo’ marryin’ the young man; provided—now listen, Mell!—provided you kin git him. He’s es purty es er grayhoun’, an’ I reckin has es much intellergence, but insted ef lettin’ him make a fool er you, es he’s now tryin’ ter do, turn the tables, Mell. The biggest fool on top o’ this airth is the woman who wants ter git married; the next biggest fool is the man in er hurry ter git er wife! One mo’ word, Mell, an’ I’ll go my way, an’ you kin go yourn. Ain’t gwine ter mortify you no mo’. Remember, what I say: thar’s only one thing you dassent do wid er fine gentlemin—trus’ him! Don’t trus’ him, Mell; don’t trus’ him! My chile, the good Lord ain’t denied ye brains, use ’em! Here ends the chapter on Devilho—”

Turning off abruptly, Mr. Creecy puffed sturdily up the hill, leaving his daughter deep in the sulks, but with much solid food for reflection.

Her eyes followed him sullenly. He was but one remove from—a darkey. Never had he appeared so irredeemably ugly, awkward and illiterate; never acted so altogether and exasperatingly vulgar, horrid and abominable, and yet she pondered deeply on his words. Their effect upon her surprised even herself. Can an unschooled man be wise? Ah, Mell! wisdom is not curbed by rhetoric, nor ruled by grammar. The respicere finem of the unlettered appears oftentimes to be jure divino.

After a while Mell wiped away the very last tear of agonized pride, which hung like a dewdrop on her long curling lashes. The gall and wormwood of her present feelings were somewhat abated. She knew what she was going to do.

“I’ll get out of this!” exclaimed Mell, speaking to herself in particular, and into space at large. “Get out of it, the very first chance.”

Get out of what, Mell? This humdrum life of little cares and big trials? this uncongenial association with an overworked and sickly old mother (once as pretty as yourself, Mell) and an ill-favored, ill-mannered and illiterate old father?

Is that what Mell intends to get out of?

Yes, and she means to do it in the easiest possible way, according to her own conception of the matter. Other girls may find it necessary to work their way, by a long and tedious process, out of disagreeable surroundings, but she will do it with one brilliant master-stroke—coûte qu’il coûte.

Put a placard on pretty Mell; proclaim her in the market place; hawk the news upon the street corners; inscribe it on the pages of the great Book up yonder!

Ho, there! all ye buyers, come this way!

Here’s a woman for sale!

CHAPTER II.
A MOTE IN THE EYE.

In Pompeii, eighteen hundred years ago, people—a good many people, were dreadfully afraid of dogs; so much so that many of the householders in that famous old city put Cave Canem on their front-door-sills, as a friendly piece of advice to all comers-in and goers-out. Just how their feelings were affected towards the domestic cow, we are left to conjecture; but now, after eighteen hundred years, and in less famous localities, people—a good many people—are still afraid of dogs, and without a nice sense of discernment in their fears, include cows, putting the two together as beasts that want “discourse of reason.”

Now, this is unrighteous judgment; for even a cow should be looked at fairly, even if she does show the cloven hoof. There are cows and cows, as well as men and men. Suke, the young Jersey, would not toss her horns at a butterfly, much less hurt a baby. She was sagacity itself, and granting she did not know the buttered side of bread, which is likely, she did know, to a moral certainty, where she got her grass and how.

Early the next morn, Suke began to low, and hoping to be heard by virtue of insistence, kept it up until nightfall, by which time she had bellowed herself hoarse. Suke could make nothing out of it, and no doubt dropped to sleep, theorizing on the perversity of remote contingencies, and wondering why it was that she had spent all the long hours of that breezy summer day in the lot, and the companion of her outings in the house.

The late afternoon found Mell in dainty attire, seated on the front porch, gazing wistfully in the direction of the Bigge House. He had not found her in the meadow in the morning, perhaps, he would seek for her in the little house on the hill, in the evening. It could not be that he had avoided paying her any attention that could be noticed by others; she had sometimes thought so, but then it could not be. She dismissed the idea; it was too uncomplimentary to herself, and too defamatory towards him.

But the slow hours dragged on; he came not. Mell sat alone. At ten o’clock she crept sadly into bed—into bed, but not into the profound slumber of youth and a mind at ease. Far into the night, her unquiet thoughts were yet heaving to and fro; advancing as restless billows of the sea, retreating as vaporous cloud-mists in the sky. Her snow-white bed—a feathered nest—erst so well suited to light-hearted repose, had changed its flexible lines of comfort into rigid lines of care.

Dropping to sleep at last, Mell dreamed she had made the world all over, from pole to pole, after a new model and on a modern plan, and having fitted it up expressly for her own needs, found it ever so much pleasanter, and a great improvement on the old.

It was upon the same old world, however, she opened her eyes the next morning, and into one of its most worrying days, holding, indeed, more than its share of disappointment and worry.

And over there across that beauteous valley, in the enchanted halls of the unattainable, life was a delightful series of interesting events, redolent of delicate sentiments and sweet-smelling savors, spiced with novelty, brimful of pleasure, amusing, absorbing, far-reaching, all-embracing; in brief, a ceaseless symposium, purged of every ugly, common or narrow element, as roseate and as captivating to the fancy, as hand-painted satin framed in mosaic.

A boy walked up the garden path. The young lady seated on the porch, saw him coming, and a feeling of exultation shot through all the blood in her veins. The boy held a note in his hand, and Mell jumped into the contents of that note, intellectually, in less than the millionth part of a second. He could not stand it any longer; he was writing to know if he might call, and when. She had a great mind to let him come this very evening, though he did not deserve it; but then, do men ever deserve just what they get, good and bad, at women’s hands?

“A note, ma’am,” said the boy. Mell took it in silence, opened it tremulously, and read:

“Suke is unhappy. Me too. Don’t disappoint us to-morrow, and send me a bit of a line, sweet lassie, to say that you will not. J. P. D.”

“The scribblings of a school-boy,” muttered Mell, inconceivably dashed.

“No answer,” she told the boy. When the messenger was beyond reach of recall, she was sorry she had not replied to the note, or sent word, yes; for, perhaps, it would be better to see him once more, have a plain talk, and come to some understanding. The more she dwelt upon the matter, the more certain she became that this was her best course; so upon the morrow, the half-past five o’clock breakfast was hardly well over, when, with alternate hope and fear measuring swords within her, she fled to the lot for Suke. With one arm thrown affectionately around the Jersey’s neck, the two proceeded most amicably to the meadow. There she waited an hour nearly, before Jerome came; but he did come, eventually, wearing the loveliest of shooting-jackets, with an English primrose in his buttonhole, radiantly handsome, deliciously cool, and as much at his leisure as if it did not make much difference to him whether he ever reached his destination or not.

“Dear me, Mr. Devonhough! Is it really you? Why did you come? I did not send you word I would be here.”

“No, you did not. Nevertheless, I knew you would.”

“Nevertheless, you knew nothing of the sort! How can you say that? I had a strong notion not to come.”

Jerome made a gesture of incredulity.

“Oh, a notion! I dare say. Girls live on notions, bonbons, sugar-plums, taffy, and what not; a pound of sweetened flattery to every half ounce of wholesome truth. But laying all notions aside, you will always come, Mellville, when I send for you.”

“How dare you,” began Mell, nettled to the quick and purposed to give him an emphatic piece of her mind, and then ignominiously breaking down, constrained, dismayed, crimsoning to the tips of her ears, paling to the curves of her lips, and wishing she had died before she left the farm-house that morning.

“And now I have offended you,” said Jerome drawing nearer, “and I did not mean to do that, pretty one! I cannot help teasing you, sometimes, because when you are teased your face has that innocent, grieved expression of a thwarted child, which I do so dearly love to see. And I must, perforce, do something in self-defence, you have been so cruel to me.” His tones were low, now, and as oily as a lubricating life-buoy. “I have waited for you one hour each day; I have gone away after every waiting, desolate and unhappy. Don’t you know, when two people think of each other as we do, when two people love each other as we do, that separation is the worst form of misery? Then why have you been so cruel, Mell?”

Peeping under the fluted archway of the white sun-bonnet for an answer, his face came in dangerous nearness to its wearer; their quickened breath united in a symphony of sweet sighs, their quickened pulses throbbed in a unison of reciprocal emotion.

One moment more, and—Mell stood off at some little distance, looking back roguishly at the figure kneeling alone beside the old stump, with outstretched arms tenderly embracing naught, and stealthy lips defrauded of their prey.

Mr. Devonhough did mind a losing game such as this. To be made to feel foolish and to look foolish, was more than he could tolerate under any conjuncture of circumstances. He extricated himself as speedily and as gracefully as possible.

“Miss Creecy!”

“Mr. Devonhough!”

“You will probably treat me with ordinary civility, at the time of our next meeting.”

“And you will probably do the same toward me.”

“We shall see, as to that.”

He bowed blandly, and turned upon his heel. He was going away? Well, he wouldn’t go far. Mell was so confident on this point, that she seated herself comfortably on the old stump again, and gave herself no uneasiness. She could not credit the evidences of her own senses when the moving figure became first a mere speck upon the horizon, and then a something gone, lost, swallowed up into the unseen.

“It passes belief,” said Mell; “surely he will come back, even yet!”

She waited one hour longer; she waited two—he evidently did not intend to come back.

She went home with a troubled heart.

The next morning, feeling somewhat more cheerful at what she considered the certain prospect of seeing him again, and to a somewhat better purpose, she called for Suke, in feverishly high spirits, and the two set off together on a spirited race down the hill.

One hour—two hours—three hours—and not a sign of her truant lover.

Mell burst into an agony of tears.

“I am no match for him,” she sobbed. “He is heartless and cynical, and imperious and selfish. He does not care in the very least bit for me and I”—springing to her feet, and dashing away her tears—“I do not know, at this moment, Jerome Devonhough, whether I most love or hate you!”

This feeling of sullen resentment sustained her through that long, long day. In the cool of the evening her mother sent her on an errand to the little country store, about a mile distant. Coming back she encountered a gay cavalcade of ladies and gentlemen on horseback, conspicuous among them, Jerome. She had no reason to suppose he recognized, or even saw, the quiet figure plodding along on foot, and catching the dust from their horses’ hoofs.

“This is my life,” said Mell, looking after them with yellow eyes, “while others ride, I walk!”

The noise of their clattering feet and merry voices had scarcely died away, when there came another sound; faint at first and uncertain, it came nearer and nearer. A solitary horseman dashed up to her side and dismounted.

“Jerome! Is it you?” exclaimed Mell, with a glad start, forgetting all the anger she had been nursing against him since yesterday, in the joy of seeing him again. “How could you tear yourself away from that lively crowd?”

“One, if she is the right one, is crowd enough for me,” declared Jerome, with a laugh; and throwing his bridle reins negligently across his arm, he walked along beside her. “When I saw you, Mellville, I dropped my whip out of pure delight, and as it is a dainty trifle belonging to Clara—Miss Rutland, that is—adorned with a silver stag’s head and tender associations, I had, of course, to come back for it. At all events, I could not have closed my eyes this night, without seeing you, making my humble confessions, and imploring your forgiveness for my conduct of yesterday. I behaved abominably. I confess it. I am truly sorry. And, at the risk of falling in your esteem, I am going to tell you something—my temper is a thing vile—villainous, but it does not often get the better of me as it did yesterday. Forgive me, dearest?”

“I am not your dearest,” Mell informed him, with head erect.

“Not? Why, how’s that? ‘Nay, by Saint Jamy,’ but you are! I have one heart, but one, it is all yours; you have one, but one, it is all mine. We are to each other, dearest, Ita lex scripta.”

“The matter is one in which I, myself, shall have a say-so.”

“You have had a say-so! You have said: ‘Jerome, I love you!’”

“How can you speak so falsely? It is not true—I did not say so.”

“Not in words,” conceded her tormentor, “but you do, all the same, don’t you, petite?”

“I am not your petite, either,” protested Mell, driven almost to desperation.

“No? Then you are sure to be my darling. That’s it, Mell! You are certainly a darling, and mine.”

“I am not!” shrieked Mell, choking with anger. This mockery of a sore subject was really unbearable.

“Not my darling, either?” inquired Jerome, grave as a Mussulman. “Then what the dickens are you?”

“A woman not to be trifled with,” said Mell, hotly; “who finds it much easier to magnify injuries than to forgive them.”

“Like the rest of us,” interposed Jerome; “but that is not Christian, you know.”

“You are enough to turn the saintliest Christian into a cast-away,” proceeded Mell, severely. “Can’t you be serious for a little while? I am not a child to be mocked at and cajoled and cozened and hood-winked, faire pattes de velours, treated to flim-flam and sweet-meats, knowing all the while that you are ashamed of my mere acquaintance.”

“You can’t think such a thing!”

“I do think it! I have cause to think it! See here, suppose you were in love with Miss Rutland—”

“I can’t suppose that! I couldn’t be if my life depended on it; not after seeing you. Why do you wish me to suppose that?”

He shot a keen glance at her.

“That I may ask you this question—If you were, would you make love to her after the same methods you employ toward me?”

“No; I don’t believe I would. I am quite sure I would not. The woman is herself responsible for the way in which love is made to her. I can’t be with you any time without wanting to call you some pet name, and I never feel that way with Clara.”

“It is my fault, then, that you are so disrespectful?”

“Am I disrespectful?”

“You are. Listen to me for a moment, Mr. Devonhough. If you really care for my society, as you say you do, why do you not seek it as you do the society of other young ladies—at home? My father is a poor man, but he is honest; and honesty should count for something, even in good society. He is also illiterate, but no one can say aught against his character; and character ought to be more desirable than much learning. Then, again, although the blood in my veins may lack in blueness, it is pure, which is a matter of some importance. Altogether, I don’t see why you should look down upon me.”

“I do not look down upon you!” Jerome was earnest enough now. “I know that I ought to have called at the house, but—ahem! my time is not exactly at my own disposal. In a word, I have not had an opportunity.”

Jerome, saying this, looked far away in pensive thoughtfulness. Mell, listening, looked hard into his face.

“Opportunity!” ejaculated Mell. “You manage somehow to call upon me pretty often elsewhere!”

“Not at a visitable hour.”

“Were I a man and wanted to see a girl, I’d make my opportunity!”

She laughed, derisively—there is something very undiverting in such a laugh.

“Would you, Mell? No, you would not. You would do like the rest of mankind; submit as best you could to the inflexible logic of events and do the best you could under the circumstances.”

“Is a cornfield the best you can do under the circumstances?”

“It is Mell—the very best. Now, my sweet Mell, I am going to be serious—really serious—dreadfully in earnest. I acknowledge that you have some cause to find fault with me. There are things ‘disjoint and out of frame’ in my wooing, which I cannot explain to you at this time. Bear with them, bear with me for a little—there’s a dear girl—and when I come back—”

“You are going away! Where, Jerome? When?”

“Only a run over to Cragmore, for a week or ten days. I have friends there, who are writing for me. Another guest is coming to the Bigge House, and I rather think we shall be in each other’s way, Mell.”

She leant upon his words as if they planned

“Mell, will your regard for me bear a heavy test? I cannot now speak such words to you as my feelings prompt me to speak, but will you not trust me blindly until certain difficulties which surround me are overcome? Is your affection great enough for that?”

“I do not know,” faltered Mell; “I would trust you to the world’s end, and to the very crack of doom, if you would only tell me.”

“And then it would not be trust,” Jerome gently reminded her, with his mysterious smile. Catching his glance of penetrating tenderness, a vivid breathing reality from a misty background of fogs and doubt, under the spell of its enchantment, Mell thought she could. Her face softened.

“It will be hard, Jerome, but I will try.”

“Then, believe me, all will yet be well with us. Whatever untoward event may occur, whatever else you may have cause to doubt, never question the sincerity of my attachment. I call upon God, who readeth the heart of man, to witness that you, only, are dear to me—you, only, precious in my sight. Believe that; be patient, and trust me.”

The deep silence which followed these words was broken only by their slow moving feet, crushing the crisp leaves beneath them, and the wild palpitations of the girl’s heart. Crystal stars made haste to lend their liquid glimmering to the scene, and blinked knowingly at each other from azure heights on high. The sweet south wind, in melting mood, murmured tunefully above their heads, swelling in delicious diapason of melodious suggestions, and mingling with mysterious elements in stirring pulse and thrilling nerves.

The rasp of a discordant tone, thrust vehemently into this sweet blending of concordant harmonies, disturbed upon a sudden Mell’s unwonted peace of soul. She heard her father’s voice. He was saying: “Don’t truss him, Mell; don’t truss him.”

“How can I be patient,” she asked, with a touch of her old petulance, “unless I know why it is you treat me so? Jerome, tell me your difficulties.”

“And by so doing increase them? No. My hands are full enough as it is, and to have you incessantly fretting and fuming about little crooked things which all the fretting in creation won’t straighten out, would be more than I could stand. Melville, you must really consent to be guided blindly by my judgment in this matter. I have studied the subject carefully, and it is only for a little while, sweet. We are young, we can afford to take things easy.”

“Men of pluck,” exclaimed Mell, with spirit, “don’t take things easy! They grip hold of things and turn them into moulds of purpose.”

“That is true,” responded Mell, promptly, adding, with that lively turn of expression which gave such zest to her conversation, “very little, and that little nothing to your credit!”

Jerome was amused. He laughed and stopped, and forthwith laughed again.

“Ah, Melville, you charm me afresh at every meeting. Where do you get all your sauce piquant? Beside you for life, that old meddling busy-body, ennui, will never get a single chance at a fellow. Your name ought to be Infinite Variety.”

“And yours,” retorted Mell, with the quickness he enjoyed, “Palpably Obscure! But here we are at my own gate. Fasten your horse and come in.”

Her voice was absolutely pleading.

“I would with ever so much pleasure, but—that whip is yet to be found, and the riders will be coming back. I must at once rejoin them. Good night, Mell.”

“Good-night,” responded Mell, from the other side of the gate, and in angered tones, “Jerome, have I not spoken plainly enough to you? Must I repeat that I am not your toy—not your plaything—but a resolute woman, determined to maintain my own respect and to accept nothing less than yours? You shall not so much as make free with the tip end of this little finger of mine, until—”

“Well,” said Jerome, “let me know the worst. When will that terrible interdict be removed?”

“When you can enforce the right by virtue of possession.”

“Heaven speed that moment!” exclaimed he, sighing audibly and mounting his horse. “When shall we meet again, Melville?”

“That rests with you.”

“But I won’t!”

“Yes, you will, Mell.”

“Positively, I will not!”

“Nonsense. What is your objection? Where is the harm? The young ladies at the Bigge House entertain me out of doors.”

“Do they?”

Mell was astonished, and began to waver.

“I thought it wasn’t considered the thing.”

“On the contrary, it is the one thing warranted by the best usage. Out-of-doors is now in the fashion. Doctors preach it, preachers expound it, legislators enact it, and the whole people make it a decree plebiscite. Clara sits with me for hours under the trees—”

“Oh, does she!” interrupted poor Mell, with a pang. Seeing her way to a question she had long been wanting to ask, she subjoined quickly: “And what do you think of Clara Rutland, Jerome? Do you call her an interesting girl?”

At the end of this speech, Mell was doubly anxious to know Jerome’s real opinion of Clara Rutland. It seemed to her that the question was more open at both ends than it ever had been before.

Jerome patted his horse’s head, told him to “Be quiet, sir!” and resumed the threads of discourse.

“What was I saying? Oh, yes! We live out of doors at the Bigge House. There wouldn’t be any use for a house there at all, if it wasn’t for bad weather. Those girls try their best to be agreeable, but none of them are provoquante and charming, like you, Mell. While they sleep away the sweetest hours of these golden summer mornings, what harm is there in you and I enjoying pleasant converse together in the green fields, inhaling the pure air of heaven? I promise you to be on my best behavior. I promise you to uphold the integrity of the tip end of that little finger inviolate; and so you will be on hand without fail, Mell, and so will I, and so will something else.”

“What else, Jerome?”

He bent low from his saddle-bow to whisper into her ear:

“That supreme happiness which is present everywhere when you and I are together. Be sure to come, darling. And now, once more, good-night!”

He galloped off, leaving Mell standing in the gateway, and on the uncomfortable side of a very knotty point. Did Jerome really love her? She believed he did—ardently. Did he love her well enough to surmount those difficulties of which he had spoken? Did he love her well enough to marry her?

“Aye, there’s the rub!” cried Mell. Her mind fairly swarmed with ugly suspicions, some of them as infinitesimal, and at the same time as dangerous as those microscopic bacteria which enter the physical laboratory, disorganizing, and, if not quickly eliminated, destroying the very stronghold of life itself. And as biological analysis was not yet, at that time, practiced as a method of research into the germs of things, Mell must needs fall back entirely upon inferential deductions.

Those difficulties, what could they be that she might not know them? If this tantalizing, and yet, withal, most fascinating, of created beings, truly loved her—loved her in love’s highest sense, and with no thought of deception, would he at every turn put her off with honeyed words and paltry evasions? Would he have said, “You must really consent to be guided blindly by my judgment in this matter,” if he valued her as she valued him?

Of one thing she was sure; she would be guided blindly by no human being, man or woman, in anything.

“No, I won’t!” she audibly informed the dew-damp lilies and the secretive rose, stamping her foot to impress it upon their understanding. Catch any wide-awake, thoroughly independent, altogether self-sufficient and splendidly educated American girl going it blind at any man’s behest! She would make short work of his courtship, and him too—first.

Still pacing distractedly up and down the garden path, Mell heard a window open, saw a head protrude, and heard a voice, which said:

“Send ’im ter his namesake, Mell. Let ’im git thar before he gits the better o’ you!”

“So he shall, father.”

“Then go ter bed.”

“I am going now—going to bed,” she continued, communing with herself—“to bed, but not to the meadow Thursday morning. I’ll cut my throat from ear to ear, just before I start to the meadow again at the bidding of Jerome Devonhough!”

Bravo for Mell! Strong in this determination, she is now comparatively safe, except for the one menacing fear, that this sentimental feeling she has for Jerome may interfere with the more serious business of life. Love was all well enough in its way, but what this country maiden panted for, was a new life on a higher plane, with or without love. It was the thing her education demanded. It was the thing she intended to accomplish.

After all, she went to bed in very good spirits. She was tolerably sure of bringing Jerome to her own terms, and if not—well, not to make a sad subject likewise tedious, Mell, in spite of all her love for Jerome, was as much for sale as ever.

CHAPTER III.
A TOTAL ECLIPSE.

Nothing ever turns out just as we expect.

The next day promised to be long to Mell, but before the old tall clock in the corner tolled out the hour of ten, something happened which gave to its every moment a pair of golden wings. Miss Josey Martlett, one of those ancient angels who personate youth, who endeavor to assimilate facial statistics and unfledged manners, who are interested in everything under the sun except their own business, came driving up to old man Creecy’s farm. Under this lady’s auspices it had been, and through her material assistance, that the sprightly little country girl had been mercifully snatched out of regions of ignorance and darkness, and maintained for a number of years at a famous boarding-school, where, among other things, she had been taught to worship the beautiful in all its forms, to cultivate the refined in all its processes, and to execrate the common and the ugly in all its manifestations. A defective curriculum—for what is more common than human frailty; what uglier than, oftentimes, duty?

Let us hasten to concede that old man Creecy has some show of reason on his side. Not all education educates. The best may furnish us with feet and hands, eyes and wings, trained members, fit implements, shields, anchorage, strongholds, and stepping-stones; but also hiding-places, weak spots, loopholes, clogs, and stumbling-blocks.

“I would stay, but I can’t,” protested Miss Josey, as Mell insisted upon her taking off her hat and sitting down in the most comfortable rocker in the house, while she herself sat beside her and toyed with the visitor’s hand, and fanned away the heat; and then ran for a glass of fresh buttermilk, and brought in some red peaches and blue grapes on an outlandish little Jap waiter in all colors, “just too ’cute for anything.” Miss Josey was Mell’s only connecting link with the country “quality,” and hence appreciated in due proportion to her importance.

“I declare, Mell, you spoil me to death,” simpered Miss Josey, “and nothing else in life is half so nice as being spoiled to death. But I must eat and run—must, really—I’m just so busy I hardly know which way to turn. I want you to go to a picnic with me to-morrow.”

“A picnic!”

Mell’s heart got into her throat at one single bound, and stuck there. Jerome had said something about a picnic.

“What picnic, Miss Josey?”

“The Grange picnic. I’m one of the lady managers, as perhaps you know, and I want you to help me with the tables. Mrs. Rutland cannot go, and there are so few to be depended on.”

“You can depend on me,” said Mell; “I will go with you gladly—gladly spend and be spent for you, who have been always so kind to me.”

Hadn’t she, though? But this was the crowning act of all Miss Josey’s kindness. At this picnic she would see Jerome, and, who knows, perhaps find out his difficulties!

“You are a sweet girl, Mell,” returned Miss Josey, gratified. “So grateful, in a world chock full of the basest ingratitude. I told Miss Rutland, ‘Mell Creecy is the girl to take your place. She knows what to do, and she’ll do it!’”

After this, Mell could scarcely follow the drift of her visitor’s conversation. She was in a ferment of impatience for Miss Josey to be gone, that she might put the finishing touches to a new white dress in readiness for to-morrow’s festivities. But Miss Josey, who couldn’t possibly stay two short minutes when she arrived, did not get off under two mortal hours, or more. This is one of those little peculiarities of the sex, which the last one of them disavows.

Gone at last, Mell went dancing over the house and singing over her work at such a lively rate, that her father put his head in at the chamber-door wanting to know “what she was er makin’ sich er fuss erbout?”

“The Grange picnic, father, tra-la-la! I’m going with Miss Josey, folderolloll!”

“Oho! Devilho gwine ter be thar, I s’pose?”

“Yes, indeed! Hail, all hail! La-la-tra-la!”

“Make him toe the mark, darter!”

Mell’s song abruptly ceased.

To make an individual of Mr. Jerome Devonhough’s subtle intellect and masterful will toe the mark was going to be no easy matter. He was far from being an exact science whose formula could be reduced to the touchstone of certainty. Softer were his ways, and more complex his web, the fabric of his purpose more difficult to trace, than the intricate meshes of this cob-webbery lace she was basting in the neck of her dress. Nevertheless, every stitch of her needle fastened down her gathering intentions to the figure of her mind. Jerome must have done with these evasions; he must tell her the truth, and the whole truth; he must henceforth act right up to the notch, or else she would put an end to everything between them, and in the future have nothing whatever to do with him. Several measures such as these, rightly enforced, would, she believed, bring the most slippery Lothario in existence down on his knees at a woman’s feet, If the man really loved the woman. If Jerome really loved Mell.

“If, Si, Wenn, Se!” vociferated Mell, stamping her fiery little foot. “Why was it ever put into articulate speech?”

She knew it, this highly educated girl, in so many languages, and could not blot it out in a single one of them! Is not mere human knowledge a kind of blunt tool?

But she was ready, bright and early, the next morning, so promptly ready that Miss Josey commended her in unstinted terms.

“Had it been Clara,” said Miss Josey, as Mell sprang lightly into the little basket phaeton, “she’d have kept me waiting, probably, a whole hour without a scruple of compunction! Come, we will go to the Bigge House first for some things I must carry.”