Chapter IV.
Nan was admitted by a very grave-looking man-servant, who, on hearing her name, led her down the softly carpeted hall, and upstairs to the door of a cozy little sitting-room, where Miss Rolf was waiting for her. The many luxuries of the room, its brightness and air of refinement, made Nan half afraid to go farther, and suddenly she seemed to feel the vulgarity of her own dress; but her "second cousin," Miss Rolf, smiled very pleasantly upon her from the window, and coming up to the little girl, kissed her affectionately.
Miss Rolf in the morning light, and in a long dress of pale gray woollen material, looked to Nan like nothing less than a princess. She was apparently about twenty one or two, with a fair face, soft waves of blonde hair, and eyes that looked to Nan like stars, they were so bright, and yet soft with all their sparkle. Nan scarcely noticed the imperious curve of her new cousin's pretty mouth or the disdainful pose of the head. She thought of nothing then but her beauty and grace and charming manners.
"Well, my dear," this dazzling princess said, "take off your hat and cloak, and sit down by the fire. I want to have a talk with you." Nan, very much subdued by everything she saw about her, obeyed, while Miss Rolf seated herself in a low chair, and looked at her little cousin critically.
"Now, Nan," she said, gravely, "do you know that your father would have been a very rich man but for an absurd quarrel with his elder brother?"
"I knew there was something," said Nan, who was afraid of her own voice.
"Well, then," continued Miss Rolf, "when your grandfather died, he left everything to his elder son and daughter. The son, your uncle Harris, is a confirmed invalid—indeed, he is not altogether right in his mind—but your aunt Letitia, your father's older sister, is strong and well, and they live together at Beverley. Miss Letitia has suddenly taken it into her head to hunt you up, and as my father and I were coming here on a visit, she asked me to try and find you."
Miss Rolf paused, and Nan, who sat very still, her hazel eyes fixed on the young lady's face, nodded, and said, in a sort of whisper, "Thank you."
"Your aunt," continued Phyllis, smiling pleasantly, "told me that I was to invite you, in her name, to come on a visit, to Beverley. Mind, Nan, don't get it into your head that it is more than a visit—unless you prove so nice and pleasant a little visitor that she will want you to stay always."
Nan's face broke into a smile that made her really pretty.
"I'll try and be pleasant," she said, brightly.
"So you would like to go?" said Miss Phyllis, looking at her earnestly. "Wouldn't you miss—the Ruperts?"
Nan's face flushed.
"Yes," she said, looking down, "I shall miss aunt—and Philip."
Miss Phyllis said nothing for a moment. She had more to tell, but she thought it as well not to say it now. She had taken a sudden fancy to Nan; she wanted the child to come to Beverley, and perhaps, if she told her all, Nan would refuse; at least, looking at the child's honest, fearless eyes, she felt it more prudent to say no more. So Nan was told that she was to go, if she liked, in a week, to her grandfather's and her father's old home.
"Your aunt thought," said Miss Phyllis, "that you might need some new clothes. You see, you will have to dress more at her house than here in Bromfield, and so we will take a week to get you ready. Perhaps it would be as well for you to stay here to-day, and go out with me."
Nan's eyes danced. Never but once since she lived in Bromfield had she owned an entirely new dress. Everything she wore had been "made over" from Mrs. Rupert's or Marian's, and she faintly understood that new clothes of Miss Phyllis's buying would be something unthought of in the Rupert mind.
"I'll leave you here a little while, Nan," said the young lady, "and you can amuse yourself with the books and papers."
But Nan needed nothing of the kind. When the door was closed, she uttered a little half-scream of delight, and jumped up, walking over to the window, where she looked out at the dull town lying smoky and hazy in the distance, and which she felt sure she was about to leave forever. She hardly heard Miss Phyllis returning, and felt startled by the sound of her voice, saying, "Nan, are you ready?" And there was the beautiful young lady in her furs and broad-brimmed hat, with a purse and a little note-book in her hand, ready to lead Nan into the first scene of her enchantment.
[to be continued.]
[VENOMOUS SNAKES.]
BY W. L. ALLEN.
Venomous snakes are those which have two hollow teeth in the upper jaw through which they inject poison into the wound made by their bite. The great majority of snakes are not venomous, but nevertheless there are more venomous snakes in the world than most men really require.
There are two classes of venomous snakes—those whose bite is certain death, and those whose bite can be cured. The only venomous snake inhabiting Europe is the viper, but its bite is seldom fatal. In the United States, with the possible exception of New Mexico and Arizona, there are only three venomous snakes—the rattlesnake, the copperhead, and the moccasin. All our other snakes are harmless. In some places the copperhead is known as the flat-headed adder, but the other species of snakes, to which the name "adder" is often given by country people, are as harmless as the pretty little garter-snake.
Central and South America have many venomous snakes whose bite is always fatal. Among these the best-known are the coral-snake, the tuboba, and the dama blanca. A British naval vessel, on its way up a South American river a few years ago, anchored for the night, and a number of the officers thought they would go ashore, and sleep in a deserted shanty that stood on the bank, where they fancied that the air would be cooler than it was on board the vessel. When they reached the shanty, one of them said he thought he would go back to the ship, and all the others, with one exception, said that they would follow him. The officer who determined to stay swung his hammock from the beams of the roof, and was soon asleep. He woke early in the morning, and, to his horror, found that three snakes were sleeping on his body, and that others were hanging from the rafters or gliding over the floor. He recognized among them snakes whose bite meant death within an hour or two, and he did not dare to move a finger. He lay in his hammock until the sun grew warm and the snakes glided back to their holes. His companions had noticed that the place looked as if it was infested with snakes, but had cruelly refrained from warning him. The officer was one of the bravest men that ever lived, but he could never speak of his night among the snakes without a shudder.
In one of the West India Islands—Martinique—there is a snake called the lance-headed viper, which is almost as deadly as the coral-snake. The East Indies are full of venomous snakes, and in British India nearly twenty thousand persons are killed every year by snake bites. Of the East Indian snakes whose bite is incurable the cobra is the most numerous, but the diamond snake, the tubora, and the ophiophagus are also the cause of a great many deaths. The British government has offered a large reward for the discovery of an antidote to the poison of the cobra, but no one has yet been able to claim it.
Africa, like all tropical countries, has many species of venomous snakes. The horned cerastes is the snake from whose bite Cleopatra is said to have died, and from its small size, and its habit of burying itself all but its head in the sand, it is peculiarly dreaded by the natives. The ugliest of these snakes is the great puff-adder, which often grows to the length of five or six feet, and whose poison is used by the natives in making poisoned arrows.
It is a very curious fact that the poison of venomous snakes can not be distinguished by the chemist from the white of an egg. And yet one kind of snake poison will produce an effect entirely unlike that produced by another kind. The blood of an animal bitten by a cobra is decomposed and turned into a thin, watery, straw-colored fluid, while the blood of an animal bitten by a coral-snake is solidified, and looks very much like currant jelly. Nevertheless, the poison of the cobra and that of the coral-snake seem to be precisely alike when analyzed by the chemist, and are apparently composed of the same substances in the same proportion as is the white of an egg.
[THE TRAIN BOY'S FORTUNE.]
BY ELIOT McCORMICK.
I.
"Papers! Harper's Weekly! Bazar! All the monthly magazines!"
Jim Richards wished that he might have a dollar for every time he had repeated that cry. He was sure he had said it, during the three years he had been train-boy on the road between Philadelphia and New York, as many as fifty thousand times. Even ten cents each time would give him five thousand dollars. What could he not do with as much money as that? His mother should have a new dress, for one thing. He would give little Pete for his birthday the box of tin soldiers in the toy-shop window; and Lizzie, for hers, the doll on which her heart was set. Then they would all move into a new house somewhere in the country, instead of their wretched tenement in New York. Jim himself would give up his place as train-boy and go into the company's machine shop, which he could not do now, because his earnings from the sale of the papers were pretty good, while the machine-shop wages would be for some time small. But these were dreams; the train was approaching Trenton, where Jim would find the New York evening papers, and he had still to go through the last car. It was Saturday evening, and he must make enough to buy his mother's Sunday dinner.
"Papers!" he cried, slamming the door after him, and beginning to lay them one by one in the laps of the passengers. The first passenger was an old gentleman, and in his lap Jim laid a copy of a weekly paper.
"Take it away!" exclaimed the old man. "I don't want it."
Jim, in his hurry, had passed on without hearing.
"What! You won't, eh?" the old man went on, provoked by Jim's seeming inattention. "Then I'll get rid of it myself."
Crumpling it up into a ball, he turned around and threw it violently down the aisle, narrowly missing Jim's head, and landing it in the lap of an old lady on the opposite side.
"You won't lay any more papers in my lap, I guess," he added, shaking his head threateningly as Jim came back.
Jim was angry. He picked up the paper and smoothed it out as well as he could, but it was hopelessly damaged, and no one would think of buying it.
"You'll have to pay me ten cents for that," he exclaimed.
The train was now slacking, and the old gentleman, who was evidently bound for Trenton, had risen from his seat.
"Not a cent," he declared; "not a single cent. You hadn't any business to put it in my lap. I told you not to, but you persisted in leaving it there. You train-boys are a nuisance. It'll be a lesson to you."
"But I'll have to pay for it myself," cried Jim.
"Serve you right. You'll have ten cents less to spend for cigarettes."
By this time the train had stopped, and the passengers were crowding out. The old man was already on the platform, and Jim was standing by the seat, angrily uncertain whether to follow him out or stay and pick up the few papers he had distributed before returning to the baggage-car. In his moment of uncertainty he happened to look down upon the floor. There in the shadow of the seat lay a long leather pocket-book. No one but the old gentleman could have dropped it. Jim stooped and picked it up. Here was a chance to pay off his venerable friend.
In another instant, though, a better impulse came to him.
"What would mother say?" he thought. He threw down his papers, rushed to the door, jumped from the steps, and ran along the platform through the crowd in pursuit of the old man. In the confusion and darkness it was not easy to find anybody. Jim thought he saw him a little way ahead, but at the same moment the bell rang for the train to start. Should he follow the man or not? There must be time, he thought. In a moment more he had caught up with the person, but it was not his man at all. It was too bad, but he had done his best. He did not know that where he had failed, two other persons—dark-looking men, whom he had noticed getting off the car—had succeeded, and were now following the old gentleman along the passageway that leads up to the street.
Still uncertain what to do, Jim turned around, only to see the train moving off. It was but a few steps back to the track, and Jim ran with all his speed. But when he got there, the rear platform of the last car was a hundred yards away, and all that he could see was the red lantern winking at him, as it seemed, through the darkness.
The train had gone off with all his papers, including those which he had expected to sell between Trenton and New York. There would be no Sunday dinner to-morrow; indeed, Jim would be lucky if he were not discharged from his place.
"$5000!"
For a moment Jim was bewildered. Then he bethought himself of the pocket-book. He would, at any rate, find out what was in that, only no one must see him do it.
So he walked down the track until he was quite out of sight, and by the light of a match carefully opened the leather flap. On the inside, in gilt letters, was the owner's name—John G. Vanderpoel, 11 Sycamore Street, Trenton. Jim had no excuse now for not returning it at once.
The sight of the name, though, brought back his anger.
"Old screw!" he said, half aloud. "I guess if he'd only known what was going to happen, he'd have paid me my ten cents. Let's see what's in it, anyhow."
The match had gone out, but Jim had another. Striking it, he looked into the pockets, one of which seemed to contain something green. Jim pulled it out with a beating heart. Yes, it was money—a package of greenbacks—and the label on the outside, though Jim's hands shook so that he could hardly make it out, read "$5000."