On this and the marked passages and the faded rose Miss Hansford’s tears fell like rain, and with them much of her intolerance of other people’s opinions was washed away. When a girl she had sung in the choir, and now, as she glanced a second time at the grand old Te Deum, she began unconsciously to sing the opening sentence: “We praise Thee, O God; we acknowledge Thee to be the Lord!”
Whether she would have gone on to the end will never be known, for suddenly there came an interruption to her devotions. She had shut the door against any possible intruder, but the window was open, and through it came a mocking laugh and the words, “If I’se you, I’d join the Salvation Army, only your voice is a little cracked.”
It was the same boy who had sent her the valentine the previous winter,—Jack Percy, from Washington, and her special aversion. Her first impulse was to throw her Prayer Book at him, but he was beyond her reach and running rapidly towards the avenue, his laugh coming back to her as he ran, and making her shake with rage.
“May the Lord punish that boy as he deserves,” she said, as she wrapped her book in its folds of paper and replaced it in her bureau drawer. “He’s riled me all up, just as I was beginning to feel as if I had been to meetin’, or church, I s’pose I ought to call it,” she continued, as she opened her doors and went about her accustomed work.
Whether it was the service in the Prayer Book which did it, or the sight of her mother’s handwriting, or the faded flower, Miss Hansford gradually grew softer, and while religiously striving to live up to her principles, she became more tolerant of the world as she saw it around her. She still drew the line on dancing and play-acting and cards as emanating directly from the bottomless pit, but the sacred concerts were less obnoxious, and, instead of stopping her ears with cotton when the band played on Sunday, she sometimes found herself listening to it and nodding her head to the strains if they chanced to be familiar. With all her peculiarities, she was so thoroughly kind-hearted and loyal to her friends, that she was generally popular with those who knew her best. A few ridiculed her and resented her inordinate curiosity with regard to their affairs, of which she often seemed to know more than they did themselves. She had a wonderful faculty for remembering everybody’s age. She knew how much they were worth; how they made their money; who they were, and what they sprang from, and, by means of her far-seeing spectacles, with which she attended to her neighbor’s business, and her near-seeing ones, with which she attended to her own, she managed to keep a pretty firm hold on the affairs and conduct of the people around her.
On the morning when she is first introduced to the reader she had satisfied herself with regard to the number of passengers who came on the boat; had decided who most of them were, and then centered her interest on Paul Ralston, whose unexpected appearance surprised her a little. She prided herself on her intimacy with the Ralstons, and usually knew where they were, and what they were doing. Paul, she supposed, was in Europe, or possibly on the ocean; yet, here he was, fastening his boat and coming up the pathway across the park towards her cottage.
“For the land’s sake, I believe he’s coming here, and I looking like a fright, with this old apron on, and my sleeves rolled up,” she exclaimed, and, hastily entering the house, she put down her sleeves, exchanged her calico apron for a clean white one, took her tea-kettle off the stove, and was in the wide doorway ready to greet the young man, who came bounding up the steps two at a time and grasped her hand warmly with his cheery, “Hello, Aunt Phebe! How are you?”
CHAPTER II.
PAUL RALSTON.
He was a tall, broad-shouldered, fine-looking young man of twenty-three or twenty-four, with a frank, open countenance and a magnetism of voice and smile and manner which made every one his friend with whom he came in contact. City born and proud of being a Bostonian, he was still very fond of the country, and especially of Oak City, where he was just as polite and kind to the poorest fisherman on the beach as to the Governor’s son when he was there. Everybody knew him, and everybody liked him, especially Miss Hansford, with whom he was a great favorite. As a rule she didn’t think much of boys, and sometimes wondered why the Lord ever made them, or having made them, why He did not keep them shut up until they were men before turning them loose upon the community. Naturally boys didn’t like her, and many were the pranks played upon her by the mischief-loving lads, with Jack Percy at their head as ringleader. Him Miss Hansford detested as much as she liked Paul Ralston. She had known the latter since he wore wide collars and knickerbockers and stole her one watermelon from her bit of garden at the rear of her house. This garden was her pride, and she nursed her few flowers and vegetables and fruits with the utmost care, contriving various snares and traps as pitfalls for the marauding boys, who thought her garden and its contents lawful prey, and plundered it accordingly. Only one melon had rewarded her care, and this she watched vigilantly as it ripened in the August sun. Jack Percy was late in coming that summer, and to his absence she felt she owed the preservation of her cherished melon. Jack came at last on the afternoon boat, a guest of the Ralstons, whose acquaintance she had not then made. The next morning her melon was gone, and in the soft, sandy soil around the bed were the marks of two pairs of feet, and Miss Hansford had no hesitancy in fixing upon Jack Percy as one of the culprits. She knew of his arrival, and that he was visiting the Ralstons. Unquestionably Paul was the other delinquent.
“Birds of a feather flock together, and I’ve no doubt one is as bad as t’other. I wish I had ’em by the nape of the neck,” she was thinking, when a shadow fell upon the floor, and, turning from her breakfast table, which she was clearing, she saw a boy standing in the doorway with an immense watermelon in his arms and a frightened look in his blue eyes, which, nevertheless, confronted her steadily, as he said: “I am Paul Ralston, from Boston, and I live in the Ralston House.”