There was a scent of spring in the air. “In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to—” love, the poet says; and so, perhaps, does a girl’s. But before either is warmly awakened to that interest, spring touches them thrilling with a profusion of thought and planning and anticipation, not so distinct as love. The young creatures feel the sap of life mounting within them. Oft-times they know nothing more, and have formed no definite idea either of what they want, or why; but their minds are running over with the flood of living. Their plans go lightly skimming through the air, now poising on a branch, and again flashing widely on devious wings to all the points of the compass like so many birds. There was no immediate change necessary in the placid course of their school-girl existence; but they leaped forward to meet the future with all the force of their energies. Yet, perhaps, it was only one of them who did this. Lucy was too calm in the certainty of the changes that sooner or later would happen to her—changes already mapped out and arranged for her, as she was well aware—to be able to give herself up to these indefinite pleasures of imagination. But Katie leaped at her future with the fervor of a fresh imagination. She made up her mind to sacrifice herself, and give Lucy her cousin in less time than many would take to decide whether they should give up a ribbon. She sunk into silence for a little time while she was pondering it, but never from any indecision; only because, in her rapid foresight of all that was necessary, she did not quite see how the first step, the introduction of these two to each other, was to be brought about.
Just then the girls became aware of two other figures, bearing down upon them from the other side of the common—two larger personages making their slight youth look what it was, something not much more than childish. There was Mrs. Stone and the unknown gentleman who had arrived at the White House, to the scandal of the old governess, last night. When the girls perceived this they mutually gave each other’s arms a warning pressure. “Oh, look, here he is!” said Katie, and, “Is that the gentleman?” Lucy said. The encounter brought to the former a quick flush of excitement. She wondered a little, on her own account, who the gentleman was; for an apparition of such an unusual description in a girl’s school had naturally excited all the inmates. A man under Mrs. Stone’s roof! Men were common enough, things at home, and aroused no feelings of curiosity or alarm. But here it was quite different. Whence came he, and what had he come for? But besides this, there was another source of interest in Katie’s thoughts. As she conceived her own plot, a glimmering sense of the other came upon her by instinct. Why had this wonderful occurrence, this arrival of a gentleman, happened at Mrs. Stone’s? Mrs. Stone knew all about Lucy’s fortune, and the wicked scheme invented by her father (of which Katie knew nothing except by lively guesses) to keep her unmarried. And straightway the gentleman had come! She watched him anxiously as he approached. He was like Mrs. Stone, and he was not unlike the smiling and gracious face in a hairdresser’s window, complacent in wax-work satisfaction. He was large, tall, with fine black hair, whiskers and mustache, and a good complexion. He had something of that air of self-display—not vanity or conceit, but simply expansion and spreading out of himself which is characteristic of large men used to the company of many women. Katie pressed her friend’s arm more and more closely as they approached.
“What do you think of him?” she said. “I wonder if they will speak to us. Will Mrs. Stone introduce us? If she does I know what I shall think.”
“What shall you think?” said Lucy, across whose mind no glimmering of the cause of this unusual visit had flown. She watched him coming very placidly. “Mrs. Stone will not stop. She never does when she has any stranger with her. Who is it, Katie? I never heard that they had any brother.”
“It is their nephew,” Katie said, with something of that knowledge which is what she herself called governessy; that minute acquaintance with all the details of a family which people in any kind of dependence are so apt to attain. Mademoiselle was her authority—mademoiselle, who, though she was “nice,” had yet the foibles of her position, and a certain jealous interest, not altogether unkind, yet too curious to be entirely benevolent, about all her employers’ works and ways. “He was brought up for the Church, but he has not gone into the Church. Doesn’t he look like a parson? When a man has been brought up in that way he never gets the better of it. He always looks like a spoiled clergyman.”
“I don’t think he looks like a clergyman at all,” said Lucy, “nor spoiled either.”
“Oh, you admire him! I ought to have known you are just the kind of girl to like a barber’s block man. Our Frank,” said Katie, with some vehemence, “is not so big—he has not half such a shirtfront; but I am sure he has more strength. You should see him throwing things. He won two cups for that, and one for running,” she added, with a sigh. She already felt something of the pang with which these cherished cups would be put, with their owner, into another’s possession. In imagination she had sometimes seen them arranged on an humble sideboard in a little house, with which she herself, Katie, had the closest connection. But that was the merest dream, and not to be considered for a moment when the interest of one and the happiness of the other were concerned.
“Frank! who is Frank?” said Lucy; “you never told me of him before.”
“Oh, Frank is my cousin. There never was any occasion,” said Katie, with a slightly querulous tone, which Lucy did not understand. She looked with a little wonder at her friend, then set down her perturbation to the score of Mrs. Stone, who was now very near. The girls withdrew from each other to make room, leaving the narrow path clear between. Mrs. Stone answered this courtesy by stepping forward in front of the gentleman with a gracious smile upon her face.
“Where are you going?” she said. “I think, my dear children, it is going to rain. You must soon turn back; and the common is very wet. After you have got back and changed your boots, come to my room to tea.” And then she passed on with little amical nods and smiles. The gentleman was not introduced to them, but he took off his hat as he followed behind Mrs. Stone, a courtesy which is always agreeable to girls who have only lately ceased to be little girls, and come within the range of dignified salutations. Even Lucy’s tranquil soul owned a faint flutter of pleasure. It was a distinct honor too to be asked to Mrs. Stone’s room to tea, and to know that they were to be introduced into the society of the “gentleman” added a little additional excitement. They walked only a very little way further, mindful at once of the advice and the invitation.