CHAPTER III.
COUSIN WILL.
If so far as the golden Californian land this book of mine shall reach, it may, perchance, fall into the hands of some who, from their number, can select the veritable hero, the “Cousin Will” of my story. If so, I would ask them to think as leniently as possible of his faults, herein recorded, for the moustached Will of California, whose generous conduct wins the love of all, is hardly the same wild, mischievous boy, who once kept our home in a perpetual state of excitement.
The tears were scarcely yet dried, which he had shed over his mother’s coffin, when he came to us, and in one corner of his green, oval trunk, there lay a tress of soft brown hair, which he had severed from that mother’s head. He was the son of my mother’s only sister, who, on her death-bed had committed him to the guardianship of my father, asking him to deal gently with her wayward boy, for beneath his faulty exterior there lay a mine of excellence, which naught save words of love could fathom.
Without meaning to be so, perhaps, my father was a stern reserved man, never seeking the confidence of his children whose real characters he did not understand. It is true he loved us—provided for all our wants, and, as far as possible, strove to make us what the children of a New England Presbyterian deacon ought to be; but he seldom petted us, and if Carrie, with her sunny face and chestnut curls, sometimes stole up behind him and twined her chubby arms around his neck, he seemed ashamed to return her caress unless they were alone. Brother Charlie he looked upon as almost incorrigible, but if he found it hard to cope with his bold, fun-loving spirit, it was tenfold more difficult for him to tame the mischievous Will, whom scarcely any one could manage, but who, strange to say, was a general favorite.
It was night when he reached Meadow Brook, and I was in bed, but through the closed doors I caught the sound of his voice, and in an instant I experienced a sensation of delight, as if in him I should find a kindred spirit. I could not wait until morning before I saw him, and, rising softly, I groped my way down the dark stairway to a knot-hole, which had more than once done me service when sent from the room while my mother and her company told something I was not to hear! He was sitting so that the light of the lamp fell full upon his face, which, with its high, white brow, hazel eyes, and mass of wavy hair, seemed to me the most beautiful I had ever seen. Involuntarily I thought of my own plain features, and saying to myself, “He’ll never like me, never,” I crept back to bed, wondering if it were true that homely little girls made sometimes handsome women.
The next morning, wishing to produce as favorable an impression as possible, I was an unusually long time making my toilet—trying on one dress after another, and finally deciding upon a white cambric I never wore except to church, or on some similar occasion. Giving an extra brush to my hair, which had grown out darker and so very curly that Charley called me “Snarly-pate,” I started for the breakfast-room, where the family were already assembled.
“What upon earth has the child got on?” was grandma’s exclamation as she looked at me, both over and under her glasses, while mother bade me “go straight back and change my dress,” asking “why I had put on my very best?”
“Settin’ her cap for Bill, I guess,” suggested Charlie, who, boy-like, was already on terms of great intimacy with his cousin.
More angry than grieved, I went back to my room, where I pouted for half an hour or more. Then, selecting the worst looking dress I had, I again descended to the dining-room where Charlie presented me to Will, telling him at the same time “to spare all comments on my appearance, as it made me madder than a March hare to be called ugly.”
“I don’t think she’s ugly. Anyway I like her looks,” said Will, smiling down upon me with those eyes which have since made many a heart beat as mine did then, for ’twas the first compliment of the kind I had ever received.