"Oh, I am so sorry!" said she.
"It's of no consequence," I stammered, making a Toots of myself.
"Oh, but it is! and in my service too! Let me be your surgeon, sir," and she took from her traveling-bag a small bottle of cologne, with which she drenched a delicate film of black-bordered handkerchief, and then wound the same around my aching fingers. "You are pale," she continued, slightly pressing my hand before releasing it—"ah, how sorry I am!"
"I am pale because I have been ill recently," I responded, conscious that all my becoming pallor was changing to turkey-red.
"Ill?—oh, how sad! What a world of trouble we live in! Ill?—and so young—so hand——. Excuse me, I meant not to flatter you, but I have seen so much sorrow myself. I am only twenty-two, and I've been a wid—wid—wid—ow over a year."
She wiped away a tear with handkerchief No. 2, and smiled sadly in my face.
"Sorrow has aged her," I thought, for, although the blind was down, she looked to me nearer thirty than twenty-two.
Still, she was pretty, with dark eyes that looked into yours in a wonderfully confiding way—melting, liquid, deep eyes, that even a man who is perfectly self-possessed can not see to the bottom of soon enough for his own good. As for me, those eyes confused while they pleased me. The widow never noticed my embarrassment; but, the ice once broken, talked on and on. She gave me, in soft, sweet, broken accents, her history—how she had been her mother's only pet, and had married a rich Chicago broker, who had died in less than two years, leaving her alone—all alone—with plenty of money, plenty of jewelry, a fine house, but alas, "no one to love her, none to caress," as the song says, and the world a desert.
"But I can still love a friend," she added, with a melancholy smile. "One as disinterested, as ignorant of the world as you, would please me best. You must stop in Chicago," she said, giving me her card before we parted. "Every traveler should spend a few days in our wonderful city. Call on me, and I will have up my carriage and take you out to see the sights."
Need I say that I stopped in Chicago? or add that I went to call on the fair widow? She took me out driving according to promise. I found that she was just the style of woman that suited me best. I was bashful; she was not. I was silent; she could keep up the conversation with very little aid from me. With such a woman as that I could get along in life. She would always be willing to take the lead. All I would have to do would be to give her the reins, and she would keep the team going. She would be willing to walk the first into church—to interview the butcher and baker—to stand between me and the world. A wife like that would be some comfort to a bashful man. Besides, she was rich! Had she not said it? I have seldom had a happier hour than that of our swift, exhilarating drive. The colored driver, gorgeous in his handsome livery, kept his eyes and ears to himself. I lolled back in the luxurious carriage beside my charmer. I forgot the unhappy accident of the blasting-powder—all the mortifications and disappointments of my life. I reveled in bliss. For once, I had nothing to do but be courted. How often had I envied the girls their privilege of keeping quiet and being made love to. How often had I sighed to be one of the sex who is popped to and does not have to pop. And now, this lovely, brilliant creature who sat beside me, having been once married, and seeing my natural timidity, "knew how it was herself," and took on her own fair hands all the responsibility.