CHAPTER V
THE MINIATURE
It happened that the Reverend Donald Maxwell committed a careless indiscretion. When he went to his room to prepare for supper, he found that he had left the miniature of a certain young lady on the mantelpiece, having forgotten to return it to its hiding-place the night before. He quickly placed it in its covering and locked it up in his desk, but not without many misgivings at the thought that Mrs. Burke had probably discovered it when she put his room in order. 60
He was quite right in his surmise, for just as she was about to leave the room she had caught sight of the picture, and, after examining it carefully, she had exclaimed to herself:
“Hm! Hm! So that’s the young woman, is it? In a gilded frame set with real glass rubies and turquoises. I guessed those letters couldn’t come from his mother. She wouldn’t write to him every blessed day; she’d take a day off now and then, just to rest up a bit. Well, well, well! So this is what you’ve been dreaming about; and a mighty good thing too—only the sooner it’s known the better. But I suppose I’ll have to wait for his reverence to inform me officially, and then I’ll have to look mighty surprised! She’s got a good face, anyway; but he ought to wait awhile. Poor soul! she’d just die of loneliness up here. Well, I suppose it’ll be my business to look after her, and I reckon I’d best take time by the fetlock, and get the rectory in order. It isn’t fit for rats to live in now.”
Mrs. Burke’s discovery haunted her all day long, and absorbed her thoughts when she went to bed. If Maxwell was really engaged to be married, she did not see why he did not announce the fact, and have it over with. She had to repeat her prayers three times before she could keep the girl in the gilt frame out 61 of them; and she solved the problem by praying that she might not make a fool of herself.
The next morning she went over to Jonathan Jackson’s house to see what her friend and neighbor, the Junior Warden, would say about the matter. He could be trusted to keep silent and assist her to carry out some provisional plans. She knew exactly what she wished and what she intended to do; but she imagined that she wanted the pleasure of hearing some one tell her that she was exactly right.