Too often, after supper, the Boy of Oldbridge takes delectable but stolen interest in the conversation of the village Post Master and his cronies. By the door in Summer—round the stove in Winter, he and they discuss the politics of the hour to many hoary anecdotes between. Pastime sternly prohibited by parents requiring infinite discretion! Thus one steals with muffled tread down by back stairs, one issues forth by back windows, one whistles to one's fides achates—and off.
Miss Adgate, who to her regret had never been a small boy, never would be, was none the less of opinion that boys are the most amusing imps and she soon exercised her opportunity for making the acquaintance of a New England lad, Master Jack Enderfield, the twelve-year-old son of Mrs. Enderfield, who lived in the Enderfield House on the Common. Mr. Enderfield, after preaching to his world for fifteen years, had left it, with, he feared on his death-bed, little advantage to its soul. He had gone leaving a library full of theological tracts and treatises, of philosophic books and pamphlets, a comfortable fortune inherited from collateral great-aunts,—and a son, Jack. Jack was blond, blue-eyed, curly haired, of an enquiring expansive nature towards those in whom he felt confidence, and a diverting person. Having met Miss Adgate at his mother's, when she returned the lady's call he considered himself entitled to drop in when he liked at Barracks Hill.
“She's got such stunning hair, mother, and such white hands.... And when she talks it makes a fellow feel good. She uses such pretty words and her voice is low and round. And she listens to a man and draws him out.”
“But, my dear, it may not be convenient for Miss Adgate to receive you so often,” said Mrs. Enderfield. “Miss Adgate has other people to see, other things to do.”
“Oh, she has always time to see me,” replied Jack, with a wave of the hand. “She told Martha to say she was out the other day when the Wetherbys called. She took me up to her sitting room and showed me a lot of jolly European things and gave me this paper knife.” Jack drew from an inside pocket, offering it for inspection, a Venetian filagree paper knife wrapped in soiled and crumpled tissue paper.
The maternal heart could not withstand such obvious proof of favouritism towards her idol. Though warned not to wear his welcome out, Jackie descended frequently upon Barracks Hill, but this, though it concerns, runs ahead, of the story.
II
Miss Adgate received calls for a month; paid them—was dined—was less wined than vastly cocktailed,—in simple or elaborate New England fashion. She returned these hospitalities and she discovered that Oldbridge New and Oldbridge Old held agreeable people. If they treated her a little as an Egeria she accepted the rôle without fuss and gave to modesty its due.
Some of these new acquaintances, of a pretty taste in letters, on far more than nodding terms with art, had, after years spent abroad—fallen like herself alack, upon a day! Alack the day on which we come to the disputably sage conclusion that East,—West.... We know, we learn—too late, sometimes alas, the fatal rest! And they had cast behind them the dust of the East, and they had turned Westward with a very lively sense of the superior enchantments of Europe. But once at home a devout appreciation of the sweet repose ('tis the just phrase), an imperceptible abandonment to that soothing peace which hovers insidious over a New England homestead, ah, ye rewards of Virtue! these had quietly engulfed in sodden well-being, the finer European impressions.
Miss Adgate a little later, perceived that these wise people—settled ere long unblushingly to New Englandism, never again intended to budge. They had accepted, deliberately, the prose of life. And Miss Adgate, enamoured of New England, still kept her head enough to wonder, with some dismay, whether she, too, if she stayed here, she, too, would end by looking upon Oldbridge New and Oldbridge Old as the be-all and end-all of existence! So many things spoke here to her heart. Her tender spirit basked here, all day, in good will. But wasn't Oldbridge just a trifle lacking in effervescence? And yes—didn't Oldbridge take itself a bit solemnly? Ah, yes! And—yes—it had a distressing tendency to be very serious about everything. To none of these states of mind had Ruth been initiated, and every good Catholic knows that mirth is from God, dullness from the Devil.