The Late Mrs. Null

by Frank R. Stockton

"You don't seem glad to get it," said Miss Annie. Lawrence looked at her, his face darkening. "Did you persuade Miss March," he said, "to stay in the house and let you bring this?"

"Now, Mr Croft," said the young lady, a very decided flush coming into her face, "that is going too far. You have no right to accuse me of such a thing. I am not going to help in your love affairs, but I don't intend to be mean about it, either. Miss March asked me to bring that list, and at first I wouldn't do it, for I knew, just as well as I know anything, that you expected her to come to you with it, and I was very sure you wanted to see her more than the paper. I refused two or three times, but she said, at last, that if I didn't take it, she'd send it by some one in the house; so I just picked it up and brought it right along. I don't like her as much as I did."

"Why not?" asked Lawrence.

"You needn't accept a man if you don't want him," said Miss Annie, "but there is no need of being cruel to him, especially when he is laid up. If she didn't intend to come out to you again, she ought not to have made you believe so. You did expect her to come, didn't you?"

"Most certainly," said Lawrence, in rather a doleful tone. "Yes, and there is the chair she was to sit in," said Miss Annie, "while you said seven words about the books and ten thousand about the way your heart was throbbing. I see Aunt Keswick's hand in that, as plain as can be. I don't say I'd put her in that chair if I could do it, but I certainly am sorry she disappointed you so. Would you like to have any of those books? If you would, I'll get them for you."

"I am much obliged, Mrs Null," said Lawrence, "but I don't think I care for any books. And let me say that I am very sorry for the way I spoke to you, just now."

"Oh, don't mention that," said she. "If I'd been in your place, I should have been mad enough to say anything. But it's no use to sit here and be grumpy. You'd better let me go and get you a book. The "Critical Magazine" for 1767 and 1768, is on that list, and I know there are lots of queer, interesting things in it, but it takes a good while to hunt them out from the other things for which you would not care at all. And then there are all the "Spectators," and "Ramblers," and "The World Displayed" in eight volumes, which, from what I saw when I looked through it, seems to be a different kind of world from the one I live in; and there are others that you will see on your list. But there is one book which I have been reading lately which I think you will find odder and funnier than any of the rest. It is the "Geographical Grammar" by Mr Salmon. Suppose I bring you that. It is a description of the whole world, written more than a hundred years ago, by an Irish gentleman who, I think, never went anywhere."

"Thank you," said Lawrence, "I shall be obliged to you if you will be kind enough to bring me that one." He was glad for her to go away, even for a little time, that he might think. The smart of the disappointment caused by the non-appearance of Miss March was beginning to subside a little. Looking at it more quietly and reasonably, he could see that, in her position, it would be actually unmaidenly for her to come to him by herself. It was altogether another thing for this other girl, and, therefore, perhaps it was quite proper to send her. But, in spite of whatever reasonableness there might have been in it, he chafed under this propriety. It would have been far better, he thought, if she had come and told him that she could not possibly accept him, and that nothing more must be said about it. But then he did not believe, if she had given him time to say the words he wished to say, that she would have come to such a decision; and as he called up her lovely face and figure, as it stood framed in the open doorway, with a background of the sunlit arbor and fields, the gorgeous distant foliage, with the blue sky and its white clouds and circling birds, he thought of the rapture and ecstasy which would have come to him, if she had listened to his words, and had given him but a smile of encouragement.

But here came Mrs Null, with a fat brown book in her hand. "One of the funniest things," she said, as she came to the door, "is Mr Salmon's chapter on paradoxes. He thinks it would be quite improper to issue a book of this kind without alluding to geographical paradoxes. Listen to this one." And then she read to him the elucidation of the apparent paradox that there is a certain place in this world where the wind always blows from the south; and another explaining the statement that in certain cannibal islands the people eat themselves. "There is something he says about Virginia," said she, turning over the pages, "which I want you to be sure to read."

"Won't you sit down," said Lawrence, "and read to me some of those extracts? You know just where to find them."