“Why not? I love her, and I want to marry her. Is there anything so astonishing in that?”
“Laws-a-massy, no, honey!” Mrs. Sims sputtered, her eyelids faltering before the myriad-flamed tallow dip. She apprehended his rising wrath, and, somnambulistically waving her hand, seemed to seek to appease it. “Mighty nigh every young fool ez ever seen her sets up the same chune. ’Tain’t astonishin’—but—honey”—she looked at him with sleepy admonition, still waving her hand—“don’t talk ’bout sech so brazen an’ loud.” Then sinking her voice to a husky whisper that could have been heard in South America, “Shet that thar door ahint ye. Tubal Cain be asleep in thar.” Her gesture, indicating the door, was accompanied by a premonitory jerk of her body which usually preceded rising.
“Don’t disturb yourself, I beg,” said Royce, still nettled.
He leaned back in his chair, and catching the door by the latch brought it to with a brisk bang. Mrs. Sims pursed up her mouth with a warning hiss imposing silence to preserve the gentle slumbers of old Tubal Cain, and neither noticed that the latch had failed to catch, and that the door, although apparently closed, stood slightly ajar.
“Phemie says—at least she gives me to understand that my affection is returned,” Royce went on, in better humor.
“I hope she ain’t tellin’ no lies ’bout’n it this time, ennyhow,” said Mrs. Sims waggishly; and it seemed to Royce that he was capable of singular temerity when he had risked the perils of seriously falling in love by simulating the tender passion in any instance in which Mrs. Sims was to be considered, however remotely. To be good-natured in ridicule by no means implies good nature in being ridiculed.
“You have a right to say anything you like, I suppose, about your own daughter,” he rejoined angrily. “She doesn’t look like a liar. For my part, I believe her.”
“Shucks! Shucks!” Mrs. Sims shook a mildly admonitory head at him. “I’m jes’ funnin’. An’ yit I kin ’member tellin’ Tubal Cain things cornsider’ble short o’ the truth whenst I war a young gal like Euphemy, an’ he war a-sparkin’ round.”
The young man looked uneasily out of the window. Could time really work such metamorphoses as these? Had she ever been young and lissome and soft-eyed and fair, and was Euphemia to grow old thus?
Perhaps it was well for the broken snatch of Love’s young dream that there against the darkness he suddenly saw the bending boughs of an elder bush all whitely abloom, and among them, the fairest blossom of all, Euphemia’s face, half touched with the moonlight, yet distinct in the radiance that came from the candle within, smiling upon him as she played the eavesdropper, her dimpled elbows on the window-sill and her fair hair blown back in the wind.