Miss Bird rose with a frightened air, dropped her eyes, blushed deeply, half extended her hand, and half withdrew it again, and stammered out, “Good-morning, sir!” which was not a very felicitous greeting, the time of day being near sunset.
Mr. Bently acknowledged the introduction with rather a stately bow, gave the person before him a calm and exhaustive glance, protruded his under lip very slightly, without meaning to, and walked to the further end of the room.
“Why need people be such fools?” he muttered, half philosophical, half impatient. He had been, as all learned and even merely clever people must be, too much looked on as an ogre by the simple. It was rather provoking to see people shaking at his approach, as if he were going to compel them to talk Greek and calculus, or have their lives.
As the gentleman seated himself in an arm-chair before a delightful bay-window, and facing the window, there was another addition to the company, and—enter our hero!
Reader, John!
A longish, curly-haired quadruped with bright dark eyes full of merriment and kindliness, and teeth so beautifully white and even that it would be a privilege to be bitten by them. Of course he has undergone those improvements which man finds it necessary to make in the old-fashioned plan of the Creator, and his clipped ears stand up pointed and pert, and his clipped tail is indeed less a tail than an epigram. But the bounding grace of his motions no scissors can curtail.
Do not imagine that John has entered the room properly, and stood still to be presented and described. Far from it. He bounced in through the window, as though shot from a mortar, and, while we have been writing this brief sketch of his person, has flown into the learned gentleman's [pg 626] arms, kissed him enthusiastically a dozen times, pawed his hair into fearful disorder, made believe bite his nose and hands, with the utmost care not to hurt him in the least, pulled one end of his cravat out of knot, and threatened to overturn him, chair and all, by drawing back and rushing at him again like a little blue and yellow battering-ram. His manner was, indeed, so overpowering that Mr. Bently had half a mind to be vexed, and could not help being disconcerted. His affection for dogs was entirely Platonic, and he had a theory that bipeds and quadrupeds should have separate houses built for them; but this creature had struck him as being the most honest and sensible being in the house, and had, moreover, taken to him.
Miss Bird looked askance at the scene in the bay-window, and Mrs. Clay looked askance at Miss Bird, and wondered at her impudence and folly. Bird had blushed and dropped her eyes when she was introduced to the gentleman, and she was now watching him out of the corners of her eyes. Bird was an old maid, with a moderate annuity; Mr. Bently was an old bachelor, with next to nothing beside brains and a name. Bird must be set to rights. So much the lady's actions told of her thoughts.
“I wish I dared send for Marian Willis here,” she whispered confidentially, watching the effect of her words. “Nothing would please me better than to bring those two together again. But Cousin Bently would suspect my drift, and, as likely as not, start off at once. Nothing annoys him so much as to see that any one is trying to get him married. Marian is in every way suitable, and between you and me, dear, I think they would both be glad to have a mediator, only they are too proud to own it. Everybody thought about ten years ago that they were engaged, and they certainly were in a fair way to be, when some lovers' quarrel occurred, and they parted. You have never seen Miss Willis, have you?”
Yes; Bird had seen her at Miss Melicent Yorke's wedding, and she was the grandest looking lady there. She wore a black velvet dress, buttoned up high with diamonds, and not another jewel about her. She had a pink half-open camellia in her bosom, and a wide-open one in her hair. Clara Yorke said that the beautiful plainness of Miss Willis' toilet made everybody else look all tags and ends. She gave the bride a rare engraving of some picture of The Visitation, which Miss Melicent didn't half like, because the S. Elizabeth was on her knees, and because there was a crown carved in the frame just over the Virgin's head. But the bridegroom had reconciled her to it, saying that motherhood is a crown to any woman. Mrs. Edith Yorke, Carl's wife, who is now abroad, was very fond of Miss Willis, and used to call her “Your Highness.”