“Claib done buy you this yer,” and the child handed him the letter from his mother, which had been to New Orleans and was forwarded from there.
The first of it was full of affection for her boy, and Hugh felt his heart growing very tender as he read, but when he reached the point where poor, timid Mrs. Worthington tried to explain about Alice, making a wretched bungle, and showing plainly how much she was swayed by ’Lina, it began to harden at once.
“What the plague!” he exclaimed as he read on, “Supposes I remember having heard her speak of her old school friend, Alice Morton? I don’t remember any such thing. Her daughter’s name’s Alice—Alice Johnson,” and Hugh for an instant turned white, so powerfully that name always affected him.
Soon rallying, however, he continued, “Heiress to fifty thousand dollars. Unfortunate Alice Johnson! better be lying beside the Golden Haired; but what! actually coming to Spring Bank, a girl worth fifty thousand, the most refined, most elegant, most beautiful creature that ever was born, coming where I am, without my consent, too! That’s cool upon my word!” and for a moment Hugh went off in a towering passion, declaring “he wouldn’t stand it,” and bringing his foot down upon the little bare toes of Muggins, crouched upon the floor beside him.
Her loud outcry brought him to himself, and after quieting her as well as he could, he finished his mother’s letter, chafing terribly at the thought of a strange young lady being thrust upon him whether he would have her or not.
“She is going to Colonel Tiffton’s first, though they’ve all got the typhoid fever, I hear, and that’s no place for her. That fever is terrible on Northerners—terrible on anybody. I’m afraid of it myself, and I wish this horrid throbbing I’ve felt for a few days would leave my head. It has a fever feel that I don’t like,” and the young man pressed his hand against his temples, trying to beat back the pain which so much annoyed him.
Just then Colonel Tiffton was announced, his face wearing an anxious look, and his voice trembling as he told how sick his Nell was, how sick they all were, and then spoke of Alice Johnson.
“She’s the same girl I told you about the day I bought Rocket; some little kin to me, and that makes it queer why her mother should leave her to you. I knew she would not be happy at Saratoga, and so we wrote for her to visit us. She is on the road now, will be here day after to-morrow, and something must be done. She can’t come to us, without great inconvenience to ourselves and serious danger to her. Hugh, my boy, there’s no other way—she must come to Spring Bank,” and the old colonel laid his hand on that of Hugh, who looked at him aghast, but made no immediate reply.
He saw at a glance that Alice could not go to Moss Side with impunity, and if not there she must, of course come to Spring Bank.
“What can I do with her? Oh, Colonel, it makes me sweat like rain just to think of it, and my head thumps like a mill-hopper, but, I suppose, there’s no help for it. You’ll meet her at the depot. You’ll give her an inkling of what I am. You’ll tell her what a savage she may expect to find, so she won’t go into fits at sight of me.”