“Every fellow says that until he meets the right girl,” declared the artist, his eyes still fastened upon that lovely pictured face laughing up at him.
“Every one save reporters,” laughed Gaines, “and their failure to wed is because no sweet girl in her senses would agree to have one of them if she stops to consider the question of bread and butter,” he declared, breaking into a rollicking tune of “How Lonely the Life of a Bachelor Is.”
“I beg pardon for this digression, old fellow,” he cried, catching up the letter. “Now for letting you know what Mademoiselle Jess has to say to you—in haste—as the lower left hand of the envelope is marked, and underlined with a grand flourish.”
The quaint letter, so characteristic of the girl who had written it, ran as follows:
“To Mr. John Dinsmore, New York City:
“Dear Mr. Dinsmore: No one knows that I am writing to you, or I should never in the world be allowed to send it. I suppose you are wondering who I am. Well, I am Jess—just Jess.
“I was up in the big apple tree in the orchard when the lawyer from the city came out here, and he not knowing I was up there, sat down on the bench beneath it and told Mrs. Bryson, the housekeeper, of the wonderful will which he said had just been forwarded to him to attend to, by somebody, I forget who; and in it—the will I mean—I was to be a great heiress—the greatest in all Louisiana—if you would marry me, and if you wouldn’t, the plantation and all the estate were to be sold, and the money sent to the heathen Chinese, and I was to go out into the world a beggar, as well as yourself, or be a governess, or nursery maid, or kitchen maid maybe.
“I don’t know whether it would be nice or not to marry anybody, but I’d rather a million times do that than leave the old plantation, where I know every tree and leaf, and even the wild birds that come and go each season.
“I heard the lawyer say that he had his doubts about whether you would like me or not, and perhaps you’d flatly refuse to comply with your uncle’s will when you saw me, for I was so thin and brown, and then my hair was like a tangled mane and looked for all the world, always, as though a comb had never been put to it, and then—a pretty figure I cut in always running about barefoot—though I am within a few days of being sixteen. I wish so much that you would come here and take a look at me, to see if it would be quite convenient for you to marry me, so that I can stay here forever and ever.
“But for fear you haven’t time, or something like that, I will send you my picture that you can see if I will suit. It was taken by a traveling photographer who came to take pictures of the old place for a magazine, and he didn’t charge me anything for it—I couldn’t have taken it if he had. He said, ‘Look pleasant, please,’ which made me laugh so that the picture was spoiled, he said; but indeed, though, I tried over and over again, I couldn’t help laughing to save my life. I never dared show the picture to Mrs. Bryson, for she would have been sure to have raised a terrible time with me for getting it took—taken, I mean. Please answer as soon as you get this, if you will come. Write it to Mrs. Bryson, but don’t put in even a hint that I asked you to, or sent the picture, or I would get punished. Jess.”