"Oh, never mind alarming the house!" replied the girl, whom he had called "Joe," the very convenient and popular abbreviation of the Christian name of Miss Josephine Harris. She was, it may be said here, an almost every-day visitor from the house of her widowed mother, a lady in very comfortable circumstances, living not many blocks away up-town from the residence of the Crawfords. In ordinary seasons Joe and her mother (the young lady is made to precede the other, advisedly)—had a habit of getting away from the city, early in the season, to one of the watering-places or some cool retreat in the country; but this year perhaps the illness of Richard Crawford had something to do with retaining at least the daughter late in town. "The house can get along well enough—it is you that is to be taken care of, and I should like to know, Dick Crawford, how any body is going to do it if you do not manage to moderate your transports and lie still when you have not strength to do any thing else!"
How her tongue ran on, and what a tongue she had! Not a bit of sting in it, except when she was fully aroused to anger, and then it would suddenly develope the faculty of morally flaying her victim alive, with words of indignation that tumbled over each other without calculation or order, in the effort to escape the tears of vexation that were sure to follow close behind. At such moments Joe's tongue was actually cruel, though without premeditation; at other times it was simply a very rapid and noisy tongue, that spoke very sweet words most of the time and exercised an influence all around it that no one could attempt to describe. But perhaps the tongue was not alone concerned in the matter. There may have been something in the rather tall and lithe form—the brown cheek with a dash of color shining through it the moment she was in the least degree warmed or excited—the eyes dark but sunny, wavering between hazel brown and Irish gray, and the most difficult eyes in the world to look into and yet keep your head—the profile uneven and partially spoiled by the nose being decidedly pert, retroussé and too small for the other features—the pouting red lips that never seemed to fade and grow pale as the lips of so many American women do before one half their sweetness has been extracted by the human bee—the wealth of glossy black hair, coming down on the low forehead and plainly swept back in the Madonna fashion over a face that otherwise had the purity and goodness of the Madonna in it, but very little of her devotion,—perhaps there was something in all this, besides the influence of her flood-tide of language, to make Josephine Harris the delight, the botheration and the absolute tyrant of more than half the persons with whom she was thrown in contact. Perhaps there was even more than all, to those with whom she came into closer intercourse, in the breath that always seemed as if it came over a bank of over-ripe strawberries dying in the sun, late in summer—and that intoxicated with its aroma as rare old wine does with its flavor.
It is not difficult to believe (par parenthese) that the pearls and diamonds that dropped from the mouth of the good little princess in the old fairy story, every time she opened the ruby portals of her lips, dissolved themselves into air and came out in breath suggestive of spice-fields and orange-groves, and that the toads and scorpions falling from the mouth of her wicked sister manifested themselves in a corresponding rank and fetid odor. So bear with us, lady of the fevered breath, if we take the privilege of ago and long sight to drink in your flood of pleasant wisdom from a distance; and think not your lover overbold, Edie of the Red Lips, if he bends so near you when you speak, that the waves of brown and the curls of black even nestle together!
"Another sermon, eh, Joseph?" said the invalid, trying to smile and apparently soothed away from his pain by the very presence of the young girl. "Another sermon just because I cannot always remember that I am a poor miserable wreck!"
"Miserable fiddlestick!" said Joe, smoothing down his hair with both hands and accidentally stooping down so low that her lips came near enough to his forehead to breathe on it and send a pleasant creeping chill to the very tips of his toes. "I read you sermons, as you call them, because you are very impatient and very imprudent, and because I really have no one but yourself who is tied down so as not to be able to run away when I begin preaching. Don't you see that?"
"Yes, I do!" said the invalid, whom she had unconsciously introduced to us in calling him Dick Crawford—"I see!" and his face grew into a transient smile in spite of himself. "But where is my sister, and what was the music?"
"Two questions at once, like all the men!" the saucy girl answered. "But go ahead, for asking questions won't hurt your rheumatism. Bell has gone out shopping, I believe. She discovered an hour ago that there was a shade of cerise ribbon somewhere or other that she had not managed to get hold of, and of course she ordered the carriage at once and posted after it. As for the music—oh, the music was a brass band accompanying the One Hundred and Ninetieth Regiment. They are going to leave to-morrow, and they came up the avenue to receive a set of colors from Mrs. Pearl Dowlas, the ugly old woman with all that brown-stone incumbrance and three flags in the windows, round the corner."
"Going to-morrow!" said the invalid, and the old pained expression came back to his face. "Going to-morrow!—everybody is going!—and I lie here like a crushed worm, unable to move from my couch, useless to myself or to any one else, when the country is calling upon all her children to aid her! Pest on it! I would trade life, hopes, brains if I have any, every thing, for a sound body to-day!"
"And make a great fool of yourself in doing so!" was the flattering response of Josephine. "Now I suppose that music and my gabble have started the mill, and we shall have nothing else during the rest of the day than the same old weepings and wailings and gnashings of teeth. Just as if, because a war exists, there was nothing else in the world to do but to go to the war! Just as if we did not require some attention paid to the needs of the country at home, as well as on the battle-field! Just as if we did not need that the trade, and the literature—yes, the literature of the country—should be sustained."
"Pshaw!" said Crawford, impatiently, and making an effort to turn over, with his face to the wall.