Patty's Perversities

"How do you do, Burleigh?" the worthy lady said. "How do you do, Mr. Toxteth? I knew we should see strangers to-day. You remember, Patty, I said so at breakfast. Bathalina dropped the dish-cloth, and then a fork that stood up in the floor, and I never knew either of those signs to fail. You must be the dish-cloth, Burleigh, and you are the fork, Mr. Toxteth. I always think the dish-cloth don't mean as much of a stranger as the fork does."

Mrs. Sanford had a never-ending procession of signs and omens. "The wisest aunt" could scarcely have extracted more mystical lore from everyday occurrences to other observers the most commonplace. Every thing with her was lucky or unlucky, related to the past, or foretold the future; and the wisdom she extracted from dreams was little less than miraculous.

What Dr. Sanford was accustomed to term "the religious ceremonies of a call," – the remarks upon health and the weather, – having been duly accomplished, Mr. Toxteth proceeded directly to the point.

"I called," he said, while Mrs. Sanford was asking his rival about the prospects of the crops, "to beg the honor of your company to-morrow at the picnic."

"How kind of you!" Patty answered with an appearance of sweet frankness; the inward struggle which had been going on ever since his entrance being suddenly decided against him. "I am very sorry, if you will be disappointed; but, you see, Burleigh came before you."

She spoke so softly that her mother did not hear; yet the words reached the ears of her earlier caller, and filled him with triumphant joy. For Patty herself, she was not quite able to understand her own act. She had beforehand fully determined to accept the invitation to ride behind the Toxteth span, should she be favored with it; and she certainly had even now no intention of going with Burleigh Blood. It was partly due, no doubt, to the fact that the dandified air of the young fop offended her honest taste; but she was uncomfortably conscious that there was a stronger reason underlying all others. She had said to herself that it would be charming to reject an invitation from Mr. Putnam after having promised to accompany Clarence Toxteth. Now she had refused the latter upon the mere chance that the former would come. She would gladly have recalled the words, and given a different answer to the rich young swell, with his elegant clothes, and a turnout which was the admiration of all the girls in Montfield. But there was now no help for it; and with a sigh she saw the form of her rich suitor disappear down the walk, and turned to the task in hand. She knew Burleigh had overheard her refusal to Clarence; and, as soon as the latter was gone, she said lightly, "I knew you wouldn't mind my making you an excuse to put him off; and, besides, mother was here, and wouldn't have liked it if I had refused him outright. Here comes Flossy. It is very kind of you to ask her; for she really knows so few people here."

Flossy Plant was a little maiden much afflicted by dyspepsia, and given to making odd remarks. Her father was a Boston merchant, noted for his dinners; and Flossy always maintained that his high living caused her ill-health.

"I am like that text of Scripture," she declared: "'The fathers have eaten sour grapes, – or drank their juice, – and the child's stomach is set on edge.' I don't mind the dyspepsia so much, but oh! think of the good things father has eaten to give it to me."

Her physician had ordered the constant use of pop-corn; and Flossy was accustomed to wander about the house at all times of day and night with a large blue bowl of that dry and aggravating edible tucked comfortably under her arm. Her hair, fine and flaxen, was generally in a state aptly enough described by her name; so that it was not without reason that Will Sanford compared her to a thistle-puff.

"I thought I would wait," Flossy said, as she came into the sitting-room, "until Clarence Toxteth went away. He always looks so soft and juicy that I want to eat him, and it makes me dreadfully hungry to look at him."

Burleigh laughed; but this little pale creature was a mystery to him, and her dryly-uttered drolleries not wholly devoid of a sibylline character, it being a profound wonder to him how one could have such thoughts.

"I don't think he'd be good to eat," he said grimly; "but I guess he'd be soft enough."

"Did he come to invite you to the picnic, Patty?" Flossy asked, munching at her pop-corn.

"What would you give to know?" laughed her cousin. "But Mr. Blood has come to invite you, at least: so you are provided for."

In such a situation what was a bashful man to do, particularly if, like Burleigh, he was not sure that he was offended at the turn affairs had taken? Patty was an old friend, indeed, in Montfield parlance a "flame" of the young man's; yet certainly the stranger cousin exercised over him a peculiar fascination. He left the house as the promised escort of Miss Plant, and went home, wondering whether Patty did not know he came to invite her, and whether he were glad or sorry things had turned out as they had.

The long sunny day wore on, and no third invitation came for Patty. She kept her own counsel so completely that the family thought she had accepted young Toxteth's escort, – an impression which she took pains not to dissipate. But, although outwardly gay, she grew more and more heavy-hearted as the day passed with no sign of Mr. Putnam.

CHAPTER III

"A BIRD IN THE HAND."

The day of the picnic dawned as fair and sweet as if made for a pure girl's wedding, or a children's holiday.

The gathering was to take place at Mackerel Cove, a little bay jutting inward, amid lovely groves of beech-trees, from a larger inlet of the Atlantic. A drive of a dozen miles stretched between the cove and Montfield; the picnickers taking their own time for starting, and speed in going, the rendezvous being at the hour fixed for dinner.

Patty saw the family depart one by one. First Will went to call for Ease Apthorpe, the lady-elect of his heart or fancy; then Dr. Sanford drove off with his wife, intending to visit certain patients on the way; and, last of all, Flossy was swung lightly up into his buggy by the mighty arms of Burleigh Blood.

"Don't you mean to go at all?" the latter asked of Patty, who came running after them with Flossy's bowl of pop-corn.

"I never tell my plans," she laughed gayly. "Mother went off predicting that something dreadful was sure to happen. How do you know but I am afraid to go?"

"Pooh! She's going with Clarence Toxteth," Flossy said.

"But" – began her escort.

"There! Drive on, and don't bother about me," said Patty. "I have usually been thought able to take care of my own affairs. A pleasant ride to you."

She turned back toward the lonely house. Bathalina Clemens was at work somewhere in the chambers, counteracting any tendency to too great cheerfulness which the beauty of the day might develop in her mind, by singing the most doleful of minors: —

"'Hearken, ye sprightly, and attend, ye vain ones;
Pause in your mirth, adversity consider;
Learn from a friend's pen sentimental, painful
Death-bed reflections,'"

she sang, with fearful inflections and quavers. Patty's face fell. A feeling of angry disappointment came over her. This picnic was an event in Montfield. What to the belle of the season would be the loss of its most brilliant ball was this privation to Patty. This is a relative world, wherein the magnitude of an object depends upon the position of the eye which observes it; and for the time being the picnic filled the whole field of mental vision of the young people of the village. Nor did it tend to lessen the girl's annoyance that the fault was her own, although she resolutely persisted in thinking that she thought herself not at all responsible, but had transferred the entire blame upon the shoulders of the cavalier who should have invited her, and had not. She wandered restlessly through the house and garden, at last seating herself upon the piazza with a book, upon which she vainly attempted to fix her attention. From above came the voice of Bathalina chanting, —

"'Shun my example!'"

"'Shun your example!'" muttered Patty to herself. "I shall shun my own hereafter. I might have known that poky old Tom Putnam wouldn't ask me. It is too mean that I should have to stay at home! He might at least have given me a chance to refuse him, and then I should have known what to count on. He is so intensely aggravating. I don't doubt he took Flora Sturtevant. I've no patience with a man that will let himself be trapped by a flirt like her."

And at that moment, raising her eyes, she saw the object of her animadversions – a tall, slender man of two or three and thirty – coming up the walk. He seemed surprised to find her at home.

"Good-morning," Mr. Putnam said, in a voice which few persons heard with indifference, so rich and pleasing it was. "I supposed you had gone to the picnic."

"You see I haven't."

It required no great penetration to see that Patty was out of spirits. The new-comer looked at her keenly.

"Thank you, I will sit down for a moment," he said, as if she had invited him to do so. "These steps are very comfortable. Don't trouble to get me a chair."

"I had not the faintest intention of doing so," she returned.

"Why have you not gone?" he asked, looking up at her curiously from his seat upon the piazza-steps.

"I chose to stay at home," she answered shortly.

"Conclusive, but impossible. A better reason, please?"

"I do not know that it can make any difference to you why I stay at home."

"But it does, however ignorant you may be on that point."

"Why should it?"

"You have not answered me," he said; "but I will be generous, and tell you why. I was coming yesterday to invite you myself, and heard that you were going with Burleigh Blood."

"Did you?" she asked, brightening visibly. "That was a lie I told, or rather a lie I didn't tell. How did you hear of it?"

"I heard Clarence Toxteth say so. Is your list of questions much longer?"

"If Bathalina doesn't stop singing such hymns," Patty said irrelevantly, "I know I shall murder her sooner or later."

"I would," he answered, looking at his watch. "I came for a book of your father's; but it is no matter to-day. I will have the horse at the gate in fifteen minutes. Can you be ready so soon?"