LOUISA’S STORY
They tell I passed the store six times to-day
And just to get a glimpse of Alfred Gray.
The very idea of such a thing!
And them a going round a tattling
As though it all were true! It isn’t fair;
But let them talk, I’m sure I do not care.
Why, as I passed the store I looked away
And never even thought of Alfred Gray.
Now let me see. ’Tis about a month or so
Since Alfred called—’tis just a month ago.
I didn’t say a word to him that night
Of what I’d heard, but acted gay and light,
And wasn’t jealous, either—not a bit,
Not the least, little tiny speck of it.
I talked and laughed, but as he went away
I said, “You’ll get a letter, Alfred Gray.”
And that was all I said, except, of course, “Good-bye,”
But after he was gone—I don’t know why—
I angry grew and wrote that letter then.
I told him what I thought of all the men,
And ’bout him calling on my Cousin Kate;
Said I, “It isn’t jealousy, but hate,
That prompts me now to write to you this way,
So cease your calling on me, Alfred Gray.”
Next morn I sent the letter off to town,
And Cousin Kate, she heard how I’d gone down
And how I’d begged the postal clerk in vain
For him to give the letter back again;
Of course, it was a silly thing in me,
But then it really looked like jealousy,
And worried me to think of it that way—
Not that I cared at all for Alfred Gray.
And when my Cousin Kate came round to call,
She sat up straight, and prim, and proud, and tall,
But I could see a twinkle in her eye,
As after while she bluntly asked me why
I worried ’bout that letter I had sent.
’Twas then that all the anger in me pent
Burst forth; I said in my severest way,
“’Tis you who came ’twixt me and Alfred Gray.”
Kate frowned at first, and then she laughed outright,
And said that maybe she could throw some light
Upon the mystery that troubled so.
A friend of hers she said, not long ago,
Who looked like Alfred, came to call on her—
He looked like Alfred, only handsomer,
She laughed—and people talked—it is their way—
They took the handsome man for Alfred Gray.
Then Kate pretended dignity
And wounded feelings, too, and teasing me,
She said, it hurt her—what I said—and sighed,
Till both began to laugh—and then I cried,
For though I knew Kate told the truth to me,
It added still to my perplexity
If I should then attempt to tell the way
It all had come about to Alfred Gray.
I felt so ’shamed in writing Alfred, then
And he’s so stubborn, too, like most the men,
He hasn’t written me a line as yet.
I maybe do sometimes a little fret,
And maybe, though it does seem very bold,
(You must not tell, or else I’ll know who told)
I may have passed the store six times to-day
To get a little glimpse of Alfred Gray.
It had all been arranged and ’twas timed to the hour
For Amanda to dance with the old bachelor,
The chap’ron, ’twas said, had a song of her own;
She expected, of course, to have sung it alone,
And though she led off in a rather high key,
The dancers all joined her with boisterous glee,
For they slyly had conned it the evening before;
And they made it the jolliest dance on the floor,
And though she protested, it all was in vain,
They began it all over and sang it again.