“How I hate this life,—planning how to get your bread and butter,—and how glad I shall be when I am out of it; but I mean to be patient and bear it, knowing what happiness there is in the future for me. When shall I see you, I wonder? Will you not come as soon as you are able to travel and spend the remainder of your vacation with me? You will at least stop here on the way to Amherst, and for that time I live.
“Lovingly yours, Joe.”
It would be impossible to describe the nature of Everard’s feelings as he read this letter, which seemed to him coarse, and selfish, and heartless in the extreme. Couldn’t Josephine, understand such a character as Rossie’s, or appreciate the noble thing she had done? Could she only see in it a pretext for laughing till “she split her sides,” and was it a nice thing in her to tell Dr. Matthewson of the letter, and even show it to him, making him roll on the grass, and roar and kick in her presence? Had she no delicacy or refinement, to allow such a thing? Would any man dare do that with Bee or even Rossie, child though she was? Was Josey devoid of that womanly dignity which puts a man always on his best behavior? He feared she was, he said sadly to himself, as he recalled the free and easy manner he had always assumed with her. How many times had he sat with his feet higher than his head, and smoked directly in her face, or stretching himself full length upon the grass while she sat beside him, laid his head in her lap and talked such slang as he would blush to have Rossie hear; and she had laughed, and jested, and allowed it all, or at the most reproved him by asking if he were not ashamed of himself. Josey was not modest and womanly, like his mother, and Bee, and Rosamond. She was not like them at all, and for a moment there swept over the young man such a feeling of revulsion and disgust that his whole being rose up against the position in which he was placed, and from his inmost soul he cried out, “I cannot have it so!”
He had sown the wind, and he was beginning to reap the whirlwind; and it was a very nervous, feverish patient which Rossie found when she came back to him, bringing the paper he was to sign, and which was to keep him straight. She called it a pledge, and it read:
“I hereby solemnly promise never to drink a drop of liquor, never to smoke a pipe or cigar, never to race with fast horses, never to play cards or any other game for money, never to bet, and to have just as little to do with Joe Fleming as I possibly can.
“Signed by me, at the Forrest House, this —— day of August, 18—.”
“There!” Rossie said, as she read it to him, and offered him the pen; “you’ll sign that and then be very safe.”
“Rossie,” he said vehemently, “I wish to Heaven I could honorably subscribe to the whole of it, but I cannot. I must erase the part about Joe Fleming. I cannot explain to you why, but I must keep my acquaintance with Joe, but I’ll promise not to be influenced in that direction any more. Will that do?”
“Yes, but I did so hope you would break with him entirely. I know he makes you bad. You told me when you came home you had no debts, and I believed you, and yet you owed this man seventy-five dollars, and I was so sorry to find you did not tell me true.”
Rossie’s eyes were full of tears as she said this, for losing faith in Everard had hurt her sorely, but he hastened to reassure her.