Boston Neighbours In Town and Out

by Agnes Blake Poor

"It was Miss Marian he wanted to see," said Katy.

"How very strange!" said Miss Caroline. But Mrs. Carter, dimly remembering Marian's South Boston errand, till now forgotten, and bewildered with the endeavour to weave any coherent theory out of her scattered recollections, was silent; and Marian glided speechless out of the room, and up the back stairs to her own for one hasty peep at her looking-glass, and then down the front stairs again.

"Aunt Marian!" shouted Winnie from a front upper window, and she started at his tone, grown loud and boyish in a moment; "the gentleman came on a horse, and tied it to a post, and it is black, and it is stamping on the sidewalk; just hear it!" But Marian, whose pet he was, passed him without a word.

She lingered so little that the Colonel had no more time to examine her abode than she had had his, and here the subject was more complex. The room was not very small, but it was very full, and everything in it, so to speak, was smothered. The carpet was covered with large rugs, and those again with small ones, and all the tables with covers, and those with mats. Each window had four different sets of curtains, and every sofa and chair was carefully dressed and draped. The very fireplace was arrayed in brocaded skirts like a lady, precluding all possibility of lighting a fire therein without causing a conflagration, and, indeed, those carefully placed logs were daily dusted by the parlour-maid. Every available inch of horizontal space was crowded with small objects, and what could not be squeezed on that was hung on the walls. The use of most of these was an enigma to the Colonel; he had an idea that they might be designed for ornament, and some, as gift books and booklets and Christmas cards, appealed to a literary taste; but he was a little overwhelmed by them, especially as there were a number of little boxes and bags and baskets about, trimmed and adorned in various fashions, which might contain as many more. There were a great many really pretty things there, if one could have taken them in; but they were utterly swamped, owing to the fatal habit which prevailed in the family of all giving each other presents on every Christmas and birthday.

The Colonel felt terribly big and awkward among them. He sat down on a little chair with gilded frame and embroidered back and seat. It cracked beneath him, and he sprang hastily up and took another, from which he could see out of a window, and into a trim little garden where plants were bedded out in small beds neatly cut in shaved green turf. A few flowers were allowed in the drawing-room, discreetly quarantined on a china tray, though there were any number of empty vases, and from above he could hear the cheerful warble of a distant canary-bird, which woke no answering life in the stuffed corpses of his predecessors standing about under glass shades.

The room looked stuffy, but it was not; the air was very sweet and clean and clear, and the Colonel felt uncomfortably that he was scenting it with tobacco. There could be no dust beneath those rugs, no spot on the glass behind those curtains. There was a feminine air of neatness, and even of fussiness, that pleased him; everything was so carefully preserved, so exquisitely cared for. It would be nice to have some one to look after one's things like that; he knew that the rubbish at home was always getting beyond him somehow.

And now came blushing in his late visitor, even more daintily pretty than he had thought her before.

The Colonel made a long call, as all the family, anxious to see the great man, dropped in one after the other; but the situation was not unpleasing to him, and he even exerted himself to win their liking, which was the easiest thing in the world. He told Mrs. Carter that he had come on behalf of his quondam servant, Drusilla Elms, whose name, he was sorry to say, his cook had forgotten; but now she remembered it, and could give her the very highest character, and he should be sorry if their carelessness had lost the poor girl so excellent a place. He listened to the tale of the grandmother's rheumatism, and even made some confidences in return about his own. He talked about the soldiers' lending libraries with Aunt Caroline, and promised to write to a friend of his in the regulars on the subject. In his imposing presence the great-aunt sat silently attentive. He had met Isabel's late husband, and he took much notice of her children. He said Winnie was a fine little lad, but would be better for a frolic with other boys. Could he not come over and spend a Saturday afternoon with them at South Boston, and his boys would take him on the water? Oh, yes; they were very careful, and quite at home in a boat. Yes, he would go with them himself, if Mrs. Dale would prefer it; and then the invitation was given and accepted—no unmeaning, general one, but a positive promise for Saturday next, and the one after if it rained. Of course, he should be charmed to have some of the ladies come, too. Miss Carter would, perhaps, for she knew the way. He did not take leave till his horse, to Winnie's ecstatic delight, had pawed a large hole in the ground; and a chorus of praise arose behind him from every tongue but Marian's.

Colonel Hayward said nothing about his visit at home; but as he stood after returning from his long ride, for which the boys had observed that he had equipped himself with much more than ordinary care, smoking a meditative cigar before the crackling little fire which the afternoon east wind of a Boston May rendered so comfortable, he was roused by his nephew Bob's voice:

"Really, Uncle Rob, our bachelor housekeeping is getting into a hopeless muddle!" Then, as his uncle said nothing: "I am afraid—I am really afraid that one of us will have to marry."