“Bother take the missionaries,” he said. “I wanted to show you how fast Dido can trot.”
“Yes, I know; but there are other days than Sunday, and there are lots of girls aching to go with you to-day,” Josephine said, as she fastened a little more securely the bouquet in his button-hole, and let her hands rest longer on his coat-sleeve than was necessary.
“But I shan’t take ’em. I shall wait for you,” he answered, quite soothed and mollified.
Then he bade her good-by, and drove off, while Josephine returned to Beatrice and said, laughingly:
“What bores boys of a certain age are, and how they always fasten upon a girl older than themselves! This Gerard cannot be over twenty. He reminds me a little in his dress of Everard Forrest when he first came here, so fastidious and elegant, as if he had just stepped from a bandbox.”
“He is very different from that now,” Beatrice replied, rousing up at once in Everard’s defense. “Of course he can never look like anything but a gentleman, but he wears his coats and boots and hats until they are positively shabby. It would almost seem as if he were hoarding up money for some particular purpose, he is so careful about expense. He neither smokes, nor chews, nor drinks, and it is said of him that he has not a single bad habit; his wife, should he ever have one, ought to be very proud of him.”
Beatrice was very eloquent and earnest in her praises of Everard, and watched closely the effect on Josephine. There certainly was a different, expression on her face as she listened to this high encomium on her husband, whose economies she well knew were practiced for her, and there was something like a throb of gratitude or affection in her heart when she heard that the money she had supposed was given him by his father was earned or saved by himself, that she might be daintily clothed.
“I am delighted with this good account of him, and so will mamma be,” she said; “he must have changed so much, for he was very extravagant and reckless when we knew him, but I liked him exceedingly.”
Again there was the sound of wheels stopping before the gate, and excusing herself, Josephine hurried away to meet the second gallant who had come to take her to ride. Of course she could not go, and so the young man staid with her, and Walter Gerard drove back that way, and seeing her in the parlor tied his horse to the fence and came sauntering in with the air of one sure of a welcome.
Josephine did not appear at the tea-table, but Beatrice saw Agnes taking a tray into the parlor, and knew the trio were served in there, and felt greatly shocked and disgusted when she heard the clock strike twelve before the sound of suppressed voices and laughter ceased in the parlor, and the two buggies were driven rapidly away.