John remained standing when the lady was gone.
“Do sit down,” said Miss Schenectady, settling herself once more in her corner.
“Thank you, I think I must be going now,” answered John. “It is late.” As he spoke he turned toward Miss Thorn, and for the first time saw her under the bright light of the old-fashioned gas chandelier.
The young girl was perhaps not what is called a great beauty, but she was undeniably handsome, and she possessed that quality which often goes with quick perceptions and great activity, and which is commonly defined by the expression “striking.” Short, rather than tall, she was yet so proportioned between strength and fineness as to be very graceful, and her head sat proudly on her shoulders–too proudly sometimes, for she could command and she could be angry. Her wide brown eyes were bright and fearless and honest. The faint color came and went under the clear skin as freely as the heart could send it, and though her hair was brown and soft, there were ruddy tints among the coils, that flashed out unexpectedly here and there like threads of red gold twined in a mass of fine silk.
John looked at her in some astonishment, for in his anxiety to be gone and in the dimness of the corner where they had sat, he had not realized that Josephine was any more remarkable in her appearance than most of the extremely young women who annually make their entrance into society, with the average stock of pink and white prettiness. They call them “buds” in Boston–an abbreviation for rosebuds.
Fresh young roses of each opening year, fresh with the dew of heaven and the blush of innocence, coming up in this wild garden of a world, what would the gardener do without you? Where would all beauty and sweetness be found among the thorny bushes and the withering old shrubs and the rotting weeds, were it not for you? Maidens with clean hands and pure hearts, in whose touch there is something that heals the ills and soothes the pains of mortality, roses whose petals are yet unspotted by dust and rain, and whose divine perfume the hot south wind has not scorched, nor the east wind nipped and frozen–you are the protest, set every year among us, against the rottenness of the world’s doings, the protest of the angelic life against the earthly, of the eternal good against the eternal bad.
John Harrington looked at Miss Thorn, and looked at her with pleasure, for he saw that she was fair–but in spite of her newly discovered beauty he resisted Miss Schenectady’s invitation to sit down again, and departed. Any other man would have stayed, under the circumstances.
“Well, Josephine,” said Miss Schenectady, when he was gone, “now you have seen John Harrington.”
Josephine looked at her aunt and laughed a little; it seemed to her a very self-evident fact, since John had just gone.
“Exactly,” said she. “Won’t you call me Joe, aunt Zoruiah? They all do at home–even Ronald.”