Uncle Phil was more astounded than when asked by Edna to kiss her. Of his own accord, he would quite as soon have taken a young alligator into his family as a girl, a woman; but there was something about this one standing there before him, and now actually grasping his hand instead of the rake, which completely unmanned him. Those eyes, and the touch of the white fingers clinging so closely to his own, could not be resisted, and with a quick, nervous motion, he began to step backwards, and sideways, and then forwards, ejaculating meanwhile, “Lord bless me,—yes, yes! I feel very queer; yes I do. Let go my rake. This is sudden. Yes, yes. You don’t like sleepin’ with all the young ones in the deestrict. Don’t blame you. I’d as soon sleep with a nest of woodchucks. Yes, yes. This is curis. I must have some snuff.”
He got his hand free from Maude, took two or three good pinches of his favorite Macaboy, offered her some, and then, giving a hitch to his suspender, replied to her question, repeated, “May I stay with you, Mr. Overton?”
“Yes, yes; I s’pose you’ll have to, if Beck is willin’. I’ll see her to-night, and let you know.”
He said this last by way of giving himself a chance to draw back, for already he began to repent, and feel how terrible it would be to have a young woman in his house all the time,—to-day, to-morrow, and next day. It was a great deal worse than sleeping with every child in town, and he brought up Beck as the pack-horse who was to carry the burden of his refusal on the morrow. But Maude outwitted him there.
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” she cried. “You are the dearest man in the world. Becky is all right. I saw her first, and she said if you were willing, she was. I shall move this very day, for I cannot stay with Mrs. Higgins another hour. Thank you again, ever so much, you dear, darling man.”
She was tripping off across the fields, leaving the enemy totally routed and vanquished, and sick at his stomach, and dizzy-headed, as he tried to think how many more weeks there were before vacation.
“Nine, ten, TWELVE!” he fairly groaned. “I can’t stand it. I won’t stand it. I’ll put a stop to it,—see if I don’t. Yes, yes; to have them boots trottin’ up and down the stairs, and them petticoats whiskin’ through the doors, and makin’ me feel so curis. I’ll go crazy,—I feel like it now.”
He tried snuff,—six pinches; but that didn’t answer. Then he tried raking hay so fast, that to use his own words, “he sweat like a butcher;” then he tried cooling his feet in the brook near by, and wiping them on his bandanna; but nothing was of avail to drive away “that curis feelin’ at the pit of his stomach,” and long before sunset he left his work, and wended his way homeward.
The enemy was there before him, or, at least, a part of her equipments, for two of the Higgins’ boys had brought over Maude’s satchel, and sun-umbrella, and water-proof, and two or three books, and a pair of overshoes; all of which were on the kitchen-table, while the boys were swinging on the gate in the front yard.
Uncle Phil ordered the boys home, and “the traps” up in the little “back chamber.”