The comments of the Boston editor, following the sketch, declared that the friends of Miss Mary Ellen Tatum in Boston, where she spent her early years and where she was educated, were proud of her remarkable success, and predicted for her a glorious career as an artist.
I had no more than cut this piece from the newspaper when the door-bell rang, and as there happened to be no one in the house to answer it at the moment, I went to the door myself, the clipping still in my hand, and there before my eyes was Colonel Bolivar Blasengame, his fine face beaming with good-nature. He had come at a moment when I most desired to see him, and I greeted him cordially.
“I see now,” said the colonel,“why it is I can never catch you in your office in town; you do your work at home. Well, that’s lots better than workin’ where any and everybody can come in on you. I thought I’d find you out here enjoying your otium cum digitalis, as old Tuck Bonner used to say; but instead of that you’re waist-deep in newspapers.”
I assured the colonel that there were some people in the world whom I would be glad to see, no matter how busy I might be.
“I know the feeling,” replied Colonel Blasengame; “but you’ll be cussing me as sure as the world, for I haven’t a grain of business to see you about. But I hear Tumlin and old Aunt Minervy Ann talking about you so constantly that I thought I’d come out and say howdye, if no more.”
“Well, you’ll have to say more than that this time,” I remarked; “I was just thinking, when you rang the door-bell, that I would give something pretty to see you.”
“Now, is that reely so?” cried the colonel. “Then I’m twice glad—once because I took a notion to come, and once again because you’re glad. You used to fight so shy of me when you lived among us that I was afraid I wouldn’t get on wi’ you; but I’m sorter offish myself.”
“Colonel,” said I, “did you ever know Mary Ellen Tatum?”
He rubbed his face and forehead with his hand, and regarded me with a slight frown, and a smile that seemed to mean anything except pleasure.
“Will you allow me to ask you why you put such a question to me?”