"How lovely she is, Juma!"
It was a dismal household, that of the old mansion—the master absorbed in his passion for wealth and worship of family; the three eldest daughters, who might once have had some individuality but now were moulded in the form of their father. "Callow old maids," any individual of the lower ranks of York would have dubbed them. They wore little bunches of sedate curls over each ear, and dressed in sombre, genteel colors proper to their exalted rank. On the first day of the week they dozed through a long sermon; on its last day they simpered politely at the Whist Club. Fears of broken jelly-moulds or of the romping Patricia's next prank were the only disturbers of the tranquillity of their lives. Jonathan Knickerbocker was their one Almighty Mirror. When he labelled Mrs. Scruggins, the draper's niece, a person not fit to associate with, their stiff gowns obediently gave forth hisses at the said lady. When he prated of his father's shrewdness, they nodded discreet approval; and at the mere mention of the loyal friend of Lord Cornbury, they bobbed like grass before a gale.
Patricia's impressionable temperament was saved by Juma's advent from the sirocco of dulness that wafted her sisters over the lake of years. His "ole Miss," a looker on at the "Court of Florizel," had unconsciously taught him to imbibe the atmosphere surrounding the Graces. A democracy could not spoil her elegance, for Chesterfield's warning was ever before her eyes. She who copied the footsteps of Baccelli, adored her Sterne and Beattie, and though her eyes grew dim, never let romance pass her window unmolested, had left her impress upon the mind of the faithful servitor. Life to him was a gay-colored picture-book, brighter perhaps because he could not read the printed page. All his maids were cherry-ribboned and belaced; all his roystering sparks clinked gilded canakins. Love was ever smiling on them! For wellnigh half a century he had listened to tales of the gay god as he bound one romance-loving woman's silken tresses. Small wonder that he thought the urchin ruled the world!
When the bells rested their brassy throats for the first time that night, and Jonathan Knickerbocker could take up his West Indies accounts undisturbed, giving his daughters freedom to doze in peace, "Miss Patsy" stole on tiptoe from the room. She wanted to be alone. Juma, ambling through the dim hall to his pantry, caught sight of her fluttering garments, but did not speak. Only an hour or two before, he had placed in the chamber where she slept a bunch of arbutus which young Sheridan, the organist, had given into his keeping. The wild, sweet-scented flower grew in but one spot near the town—an island in the centre of the Woodbridge Swamp, where Captain Kidd in a freak of fancy had planted it over the body of a comrade, tradition said, and no one ever disputed the story. To reach it, even the most sure-footed ran the danger of being caught in the bog.
Patricia wondered as she mounted the stairs how her lover had been able to come with her gift unseen. The watching negro smiled sadly and shook his head when the last bit of her garment disappeared over the staircase like a white moth moving treeward.
Oh, how terrible it was never to see him in her father's house! Never to have seen him alone, only that one time, after twilight service, when she had stolen a meeting at the Battery, while her family were taking their Sabbath-day ride up the Bowery Road!
The old vehicle held but six, and as the aunts always rode home with their brother, Patricia was left to the escort of Juma, custodian of the prayer-books. By the clump of protecting boxwood at the end of the Marine Parade she had come upon him. The sea held his eyes until there was no mistaking the footsteps. Her approaching crinoline made soft little rustles, as if entreating him to leave his musings. Her body-guard's shuffles, too, were unmistakable. Like some young potentate her lover turned about, describing an elaborate bow with his white castor. The very picture of starched tranquillity he looked, but underneath the blue hammer-tail coat a heart was beating wildly, as she, made wise by love, knew well—for her own was its echo.