“Objections! Beatrice Belknap! I thought this was sure. See if you don’t go through the woods and take up with a crooked stick at last. Do you know how old you are?”
“Yes, auntie. I am twenty-three; just eleven months and fifteen days older than Everard, and in seven years more I shall be thirty, and an old maid. After that, tortures cannot wring my age from me. Honestly, though, Everard was not badly hurt. He will recover in time, and maybe marry,—well, marry Rossie; who knows?”
“Marry Rossie! That child,—homely as a hedge fence!” was the indignant reply of Aunt Rachel, who was not always choice in her selection of language.
“Rosamond is fifteen, and growing pretty every day,” Beatrice retorted, always ready to defend her pet. “She has magnificent eyes and hair, and the sweetest voice I ever heard. Her complexion is clearing up, her face and figure rounding out, and she will yet be a beauty, and cast me in the shade, with my crows-feet and wrinkles; see if she does not; but I cannot afford to quarrel any longer; I am going to take Widow Ricketts out to ride, so good-by, auntie, and don’t be sorry that I am not to leave you yet. You and I will have many years together, I hope.”
She kissed her aunt, and went gayly from the room, singing as she went. An hour later and she was whirling along the smooth river road, with the quilted hood and black shawl of Widow Ricketts, who, unused to such fast driving, held on to the side of the little phaeton, sweating like rain with fear, and feeling very glad when at last she was set down safe and sound at her daughter’s door without a broken neck.
Rhoda’s church was wanting a new furnace, and Bee’s check for fifty dollars made the heart of the good Nazarite woman very warm and tender toward the girl who had once pretended to have the “power,” just for the fun of the thing! On reaching home Bee found a note from Everard, which had been left by a boy from the village, during her absence, and which ran as follows:
“Dear Bee:—After leaving you last night, I went to father, who was waiting for me, and goaded me into telling him everything there was to tell of Josephine. Of course, he turned me out of doors immediately, and said I was no longer his son. I might sleep in my room during the night, but in the morning I must be off. But I did not sleep there. I couldn’t, with his dreadful language in my ears. If I had been guilty of murder, he could not have talked worse to me than he did, or called me viler names. So I packed a few things in my valise, and staid in the carriage-house till it was light. Now, I am writing this to you, and shall have some boy to deliver it, as I take the first train South. I have given up law, and shall find something in Cincinnati or Louisville which will bring me ready money. If you should wish to communicate with me, direct to the Spencer House. I shall get my mail there a while, as I know the clerk. Don’t tell Rossie of Josephine. I’d rather she should not know. God bless her and you, my best friends in all the world. And so, good-by. I’ve sown the wind, and am reaping the whirlwind with a vengeance.
J. E. Forrest.”
CHAPTER XVI.
THE HOUSE OF CARDS GOES DOWN.
