CHAPTER V.
[ROSE AND LETTICE].
However indifferent or even nauseous applause become familiar may ultimately grow, it is intensely agreeable while it is yet new. Only with time and habitude does it begin, like other sweets, to pall upon the healthy appetite. Miss Hillyard, on the day of her exploit, distinctly enjoyed the feeling that all eyes followed her, and that other conversation was hushed whenever she chose to speak. It was an ovation with which she was favoured on coming down to breakfast. Every one who knew her was waiting with congratulations to extol her pluck, and those who did not, were striving to be introduced.
Her friends felt an accession of importance in belonging to her; and Mrs Senator Deane of Indiana, under whose wing she was travelling, secured a carriage for a drive along the shore, so soon as breakfast was over, to keep the distinction of the heroine's intimacy secure in her own party.
Notoriety in a hotel, or anywhere else, grows cheap when the noted one is to be met upon the stairs and on doorsteps all day long, and can be accosted and questioned by every comer, while a morning of privacy could not fail to increase general interest in the whole party. The exploit was sure to be talked over without reserve in their absence, and on their return each member of the community would be affected with the general enthusiasm which his own contribution had done something to augment.
"Tell us all about it now, Rose, from the very beginning," cried Lettice Deane, catching both her hands, as soon as they had driven from the door. "I am dying to hear everything, now we are out of that inquisitive crowd--Yankees with their straight out questions, and Canucks with that wooden British way of theirs, staring without a wink and saying nothing, but drinking in everything with their eyes. Give me Western folks after all, say I. One knows what they are and how to deal with them from the first. These down-Easters, with their intelligence, and their conceit, and their determination to know all about it, make me feel like a potato-bug on the end of a pin, under a microscope. I like folks that are smart, but the cultured intelligence of Boston is just something too awful."
"But decent Canadians do not ask questions."
"I wish they would. They are always looking them--with eyes made round, ears erect, and mouth ajar. I'd like to shake some of them."
"Stuff! Lettie. I am Canadian, please remember."
"You are different. You have lived in Chicago; and that cures most things. But tell us now!--all about it. How did it begin?"
"Begin? Let me see. We were all out together in the deep water, having a social swim, and showing each other what we could do. Mr Sefton had just picked up a shell from the bottom--quite a pretty one, too, it seemed--and was swimming up to give it me, when we heard a cry; and when I turned round, I was just in time to see a hand disappearing under water. You can scarcely fancy the uncomfortable thrill it gave me. At once I remembered the octopus they say was cast ashore last week at St John's, with arms a yard or two long, all covered with suckers, and I began to think of cold slimy things in the water, twisting about me and pulling me down. It took all my nerve, and the certainty that if I yielded to panic, I should sink, to compose me; when bobbing up to the surface came a head of hair, not five yards off. That calmed me. It gave me something to do."
"How brave you are, Rose! With me, now, the sight of a drowning man would have scared me out of my wits."
"You cannot swim, Lettie. That is why you think so."
"And then? What did you do next?"
"As soon as I could get near enough, I got my fingers into his hair, and pulled--just a little, then slipped my hand under his shoulder. He got his face above water then, and he began to paddle with his hands."
"And were you not afraid?"
"Well, just a little bit, perhaps, at first. I dreaded his clutching at me. That would have made a finish of us both."
"And did he not? And how could you have prevented it, if he had tried?"
"He did not once attempt to clutch--seemed most careful, indeed, to keep his hands away. Lettie! He is a perfect gentleman, that man!--and brave, I am sure, He thanked me so politely--by-and-by, when he got his face clear of the water for a bit--as politely as if we had both been on dry land--for attempting to assist him; but said he thought I had better let go, as I could not possibly swim ashore with him, and he could do nothing for himself, owing to cramp in his legs. Then Sefton joined us, and together we got him on his back. You cannot imagine how cheerful and composed he was, all through. He actually smiled when our eyes met. Not a struggle did he make, or an attempt to lay hold, which made it far more possible for us to deal with him. If he had struggled, you know, we should certainly have been drowned, all three."
"Don't talk of it, Rose. It is just splendid the way you managed it all, and I am glad to think the man must be a pretty good sort; for you will have to know him, I suppose, after saving his life, and you will be introducing him to mother and me and Fanny. Pity he is so old. Thirty or forty, is he not, mother?"
"More'n forty, I reckon. Rising forty-five, if he wears well. But even fifty ain't old for a marrying man--if he's well off, that is. My senator was not much younger when we made it up between us. I don't hold with very young men myself. They're real hard to break in for runnin' in double harness, and the money's still to make, ginnerally speakin'. And after the girl has slaved and pinched all through her best years, helping to make the fortune, she finds herself too old when it's made to get much good out of it. Don't you be a fool, Lettie, like my sister Barbara. She vowed she'd have a man to please her eye, even if he should vex her heart.... And she got him! And she never had a day's peace from the week their honeymoon ended. She died a brokenhearted woman, with nary bit of life or good looks left in five years' time."
"Pshaw, mother! If you've told that story once, you've told it fifty times. The fellow I agree to take will have to be well off, as well as young and good-looking. See if he isn't!"
"You'll have to look sharp then, Lettie. After twenty-five, a girl has to take what offers, or go without."
"You shut, Fan! School-girls are growing real forward, it seems to me."