A daughter of Jehu

by Laura Elizabeth Howe Richards

You see, Cissy had gone straight to the Wibirds', secretly determined for once to "get ahead of Mumma." Mrs. Wibird had been naturally perturbed at seeing her son "hove out" (it was at their own corner that the incident occurred) and at his stumbling into the house some minutes later, bleeding profusely, and in a savage humor. It was no wonder perhaps that she made the most of what she had seen, but she ought to have made it clear, as Melissa did afterward, that Wilson's bleeding was from the nose. The two reports met at Bygood's, like the two halves of a chemical formula. The gentlemen had just come in for their morning papers, and it seethed end bubbled around them. Judge Peters said "Pish!" Mr. Mallow said "Bosh!" Mr. Jordano waved his note-book in a composite frenzy of anxiety, incredulity and professional excitement, and murmured unintelligible sounds ending in "O". Italian, he always maintained, was the natural language of the emotions. The result of all this was that by eleven o'clock ("Earlier than that would not be decent, sir! not decent, after a party! The child is probably in bed, and the best place for her!" thus Judge Peters, very erect over his black satin stock), by eleven o'clock, I say, the Judge and Mr. Mallow were posting up the hill toward Ross House. Wholly improbable that anything was out of the way; those women ought to get thirty days, sir, and learn to govern their tongues! But if there were anything, these two, as old family friends, were manifestly the ones to look into it.

"We'll let you know, Very," said Mr. Mallow kindly, "if there's anything for you in it."

Mr. Jordano, still waving his notebook, thanked him, fervently, and turned to minister to Mr. Bygood, to whom the effervescence had penetrated, causing him great alarm. The ladies had not yet appeared: Mr. Jordano hovered about the old gentleman, adjuring him to be calm and murmuring, "No periloso! no dangeroso! Cheer up-pup-pup, my venerable friend; all will be right-tite-tite!" in a manner equally agitated and agitating.

The Judge and "the Mine Host," as the Centinel loved to call him, were not the first callers at Ross House. Bobby Chanter, speeding down the hill to his morning train, met Cissy's half of the chemical formula on the way; threw Education to the dogs, and sped back up the hill at a rate that brought him to Ross House crimson and breathless. His furious ring producing Sarepta Darwin in a state of high tension, he could only gape at her, and gasp, "All right?"

Now this was no morning to gape at Sarepta. In the first place, she had slaved like three niggers, as she expressed it, the day before, had got to bed long after midnight, and been kept awake long after that, recalling the way Kitty had looked and the way "the folks" had looked at her. In the second place, she had already been bothered enough by Jim Ruff, who had no business that she knew of to inquire minutely into the state of Kitty's health, wanting to know if Sarepta had seen her this morning, and what time she got home. He got a flea in his ear all right, Sarepta reflected comfortably; now she was fully ready for the next intruder.

"All right?" she said with acerbity. "All wrong, I should say, from the looks of you! Ain't you ashamed, Bobby Chanter, at this time in the morning? Go home and tell your Pa, and see what he'll say to you! The idea! You're a disgrace!"

She was shutting the door, but Bobby was not a football player for nothing. An adroit foot checked the door in its closing, and the next moment a broad shoulder pressed through the opening, followed by the whole person of a very vigorous young man. Bobby shut the door and stood against it: he had got his breath by this time; also, it was evident from Sarepta's aspect that no disaster had come to the house.

"Don't be crusty, Sarepta!" he said coaxingly. "Tell me how Kitty is after the party! There's nothing the matter with me!" he added, "and I'm your friend, you know, Sarepta! I always was."

Sarepta's iron face relaxed: it was true. With the sole exception of Kitty, she thought little of girls, had been heard to say that she wouldn't be bothered raisin' 'em: but she liked a good-looking boy, and Bobby was undeniably good-looking. Before she could speak, however, a clear voice sounded from the stairway.

"How Kitty is? Very well, I thank you, Bobby Shafto!" and there was Kitty herself coming downstairs, so distractingly pretty in her brown corduroy suit that Bobby's feelings flew "all ways to once't," like Huldy's in "The Courtin'." She was too adorable! Bobby wanted to go down on his knees then and there, among the walking-sticks and the Christmas greens, and cry out that she was his queen, and that he would rather be under her little lovely feet than on a king's throne. But Bobby was twenty-three years old and a senior at Corona College.