Chapter 4

EVEN.

So far, she had dallied innocently enough with her old playfellow; neither seeking to please nor deceive, spreading no nets of enchantment, nicely baited, to entrap the fancy of this agreeable young man (rich too), who was as frank in nature and as transparent in purpose, as physically muscular and daring.

At three o'clock, Miss Josey came to sound the horn for the races, and the crowd came surging back. Old and young, big and little, the cream of the county and its yeomanry, a congregation of the mass, a segregation of the cliques, mounting high into the hundreds. The order of the Grange was then at the zenith of its fame and power.

The crowd, as we have said, came surging back. The best of the fun was yet to come. Mell roused herself and looked about her. Here were other girls with sweet faces, and many of them, as she was aware, possessed of those heavier charms of worldly substance which oftentimes outweigh the sweetest of faces. None of them must lure him from her. He should stick to her, now, come what would. The careless beauty, the ingenuous and undesigning woman, is immediately transformed into a greedy monopolist, a wily fox, a cunning serpent, a contriving, intriguing, manoeuvring strategist, bent upon mischief, who will play a deep game and stoop to the tricks of the trade, and shift, and dodge, and shuffle, and aim to bring down, by fair means or foul, the noble quarry.

Eye, lip, tongue, mind, heart, soul, the graces of youth, the allurements of beauty, the treasures of a cultivated mind, and all those sweet mysteries of sense which float in the atmosphere between a young man and the maiden of his fancy, were put in motion to bear upon Rube's case.

He did not move; no wonder; gorged on sweets, Rube had neither power nor inclination to be gone.

After a little, a group of young men stationed themselves at a given point, not far from where this couple sat. They had been into an adjacent farm-house and changed their clothes, and now appeared in knee pants, red stockings, and white jackets, a striking and interesting accessory to an already animated and glowing landscape. In this group of picturesque figures Jerome was conspicuous. Jerome looked well in anything, and generally well to everybody.

Not so, to-day.

To one pair of eyes, not distant, he now loomed up blacker in broad daylight than the blackest Mephistopheles in a howling Walpurgis night.

He saw Rube beside her, and she noted his start of surprise.

"Have a care!" cogitated Mell. "There may be surprises in store for you--greater than this and not so easily brooked."

She turned her back upon him and gave her whole attention again to Rube. The first duty of a woman is to respect herself, the second duty of a woman is to enforce the respect of others. Some of these days Jerome Devonhough would be only too glad if she would deign to permit him to speak to her.

"Aren't you going to take part?" she asked her companion.

"No; I'm not in trim, and it's no use trying to beat Devonhough."

"_You_ could beat him," said she. She spoke with confidence and seductively.

"You are awfully complimentary, I declare! Do you wish me to run, Melville?"

"I do. Yes, Rube, I wish it particularly. Why should this stranger carry off the palm over our own boys?"

"For the best of reasons. He deserves to carry it off. Devonhough can out-run, out-leap, out-ride, out-do anything in the county."

"Except _you_," again insinuated Mell.

"Say! what makes you believe so strong in me?"

"Nothing makes me, but--I cannot help it!"

At this point, dear reader, if you are a man, and happily neither blind, nor deaf, nor over eighty years of age, take Rube's seat for a moment, at Mell's feet. Let her tell you in the sweetest tones, that she cannot help believing in you strong--let her bend upon you a glance sweeter than the tones, stronger than the words, and then say, honestly, don't you feel, as Rube did at this juncture, mighty queer?

Under the spell, her victim stirred--he lifted himself slowly toward her, inquiring in a low voice, but with intense energy:

"Melville, are you fooling me?"

"Fooling you!" she ejaculated, in soft reproach. "Would I fool you, Rube? Is that your opinion of _me_? You think, then--but tell me, Rube, why do you think so?--that those early days are less dear to me than to you--their memory less sweet?"

"I have thought so," murmured he in great agitation, "because I have not dared to think otherwise--_until now_."

And into his great soul there entered, then and there, the ineffable beatitude of the true believer.

Oh, wicked, wicked Mell! One little hour ago, and you had forgotten his very existence! Is the Recording Angel, who stands above your head up there, off duty, that you should dare to do it? Or, will it help your case in the day of reckoning, that deception foul as this, has been raised by clever women into the dignity of a fine art, and goes on among them all the while, as inexpugnable as an Act of Congress?

"Melville, I will run this race--run it to please you."

"I knew you would! And believe me, Rube, nothing could please me more."

"Suppose I should win," said Rube, "what then?"

"You will be the hero of the day, and--" Mell halted very prettily, but finally brought it out in sweet confusion, "and maybe _I_ would wear a crown."

"By my troth, you shall! But what of me? I take no stock in crowns like that. If I should win, Mell, may I name my own reward?"

"You may."

"It will be a big one."

"The man who runs and wins generally gets a big one."

"But understand my meaning, Mell, understand it perfectly. I do not want the shadow of a doubt to rest upon this matter. Who shall decide when lovers disagree?"

He had been toying with a twig broken from a flowering bay; it was stripped of foliage, save a few green leaves at the end, and with this he lightly touched the dimpled hand reposing upon her lap.

"_That_ is what I would ask. Will you give it to me, Mell, if I win the race?"

Mell trembled violently, but she said "yes."

That was natural enough. When a woman says yes, it is time to tremble. Even Rube knew that.

"You mean it? It is a solemn promise! One of those promises you always keep!"

Again Mell trembled violently--worse than before, and again said "yes."

That barely audible yes, had scarcely died upon her white lips when Rube sprang to his feet, and casting off his fawn colored flannel jacket and light waist-coat, tossed them in a careless heap upon the ground at her feet. Divested of those outer garments, the symmetrical curves of his young manhood, and the irregular curves of his honest face showed up to great advantage in white linen and a necktie--the latter a very _chic_ article of its kind, consisting of blazoned monstrosities of art, in bright vermillion on a background of white--blood on snow.

"You must excuse my shirt-sleeves," said Rube, during the process of disrobing. "I have no costume, so must do the best I can under the circumstances."

He next made off with his suspenders, and began tugging at his shirt in an alarming fashion.

"What are you going to do?" interrogated Mell, with a horrified expression. "You are not going to--"

"No," said Rube, laughing, and coloring too. "I'm not going to take it off. I'm only going to--" tugging all the while--"make myself into a sailor boy, or flowing Turk, or a loose Brave, or a something or other, to keep pace with those brocaded Templars, Hospitallers, and Knights of the Golden Fleece over there. Come, now, can't you fix a fellow up?"

"Fix a fellow up?" echoed Mell, helplessly. She never had 'fixed a fellow up,' and she knew less about it than the sacred writings of Zoroaster.

"Yes," said Rube. "Give me those ribbons you've got on--fix me up, put your colors on me, don't you see?"

Mell did see at last, and greatly relieved, proceeded to do his bidding. The sash from her own supple waist was deftly transferred to his, and a knot of ribbons at her throat, after many trials, was finally disposed of to their mutual liking.

"Now, don't I look as well as any of 'em?" inquired the improvised knight, quite carried away with the fixing-up process.

"As well, and better," she assured him.

"Well, then," he held out his hand to her, "let us seal the compact. If I win, Melville----"

"Yes," said Mell, hurriedly.

"But if I fail."

"You _cannot_ fail, not if you love me!" She spoke impatiently, and with flashing eyes. "A one-legged man could not, if he loved me! Love finds a way, and love which cannot find a way is not love."

"Enough," said Rube, below his breath. "You will know whether I love you or not."

Their hands were still clasped together in bond, until, perceiving they had become a subject of curiosity to those about them, Rube at length allowed Mell to withdraw hers, whereupon he turned off with a light laugh; that proficuous little laugh, which amid life's thick-coming anxieties, great and small, serves so many turns, and turns so many ways, and covers up within us so much that is no laughing matter.

Rube laughed and mingled with the crowd.

"Come out of that!" shouted an urchin. It was the signal for a regular broadside of raillery and chaff from the pestiferous small boy, a many-tongued volume out of print, and circulating in open space at the rate of a thousand editions to the minute.

Nothing abashed, amid groans and jeers, and gibes, and hoots, Rube took his place with the others, the only make-shift knight among them.

"For pity's sake, look at Rube," exclaimed Miss Rutland, "actually in his shirt sleeves? Rube, don't! You are not in costume, and you spoil the artistic effect."

"Look sharp," came Rube's laughing reply, "or I'll spoil the artistic result, also."

"Don't get excited over the prospect," commented Jerome, nodding his head reassuringly at Miss Rutland, "there's not the remotest cause for alarm."

Miss Rutland sat on a tub turned bottom side up, which had served its purposes in lemonade. Jerome took his ease on a wagon-body, also turned bottom side up, which had served its purposes as a table. Such are the phases of a picnic--and one picnic has more phases than all of Jupiter's moons.

"The tortoise," pursued Jerome, now turning his attention more particularly to Rube, "is a remarkable animal, but like thee, oh friend of my soul, 'thou drone, thou snail, thou slug,' not much on a run. How much is it I can beat thee, Rube, every time and without trying--three lengths?"

"Just you keep quiet," retorted Rube. "The man so sure, let him look to himself; the man who blows, let him beware! In all our trials at speed there never was before anything to win, and I'm a fellow who can't run to beat where there's nothing to win."

"A tremendous issue is involved on the present occasion," announced Jerome in withering scorn. "A lot of paper flowers strung on a piece of wire to stick on a girl's head, and when it's all over and done, I don't know who feels most idiotic or repentant, the girl who wears 'em or the fellow who won 'em. I've been there! I know. I hope a more enduring crown than this perishable travesty will fall to my lot!"

"So do I!" prayed Rube aloud, and with devoutness.

"Oh, Rutland, Rutland!" exclaimed his friend, going off into an uncontrollable fit of laughter. "There isn't anything in this wide world half so deliciously transparent as your intentions, unless--unless," subjoined Jerome, as soon as he could again command his voice, "unless it be Miss Josey's juvenility."

"Hush laughing," said Rube, drawing near and speaking low. "See here, Devonhough, you don't care the snap of your finger about this affair; you've said as much; so hold back, dear old fellow, won't you? Give me a chance!"

"Ha! ha! ha!" roared Jerome, again going off. "'_Dear old fellow._' That's rich! Very dear old fellow, never so dear before!"

"Oh, go along with you," responded Rube crossly. "Go to the devil until you can stop laughing!"

He was about to turn off in high dudgeon, when Jerome with an effort pulled himself together and soberly considered the subject. "Hold on, then! I'd like to oblige you Rutland, of course I would, but there's Clara! She expects me to--"

"Hang Clara!" said Rube, with the natural unfraternalness of a brother.

"That's what I propose to do," answered Jerome. "Hang her with a wreath!"

"Don't!" again pleaded Rube. "Not this time. If you just won't, I'll--"

"Rub-a-dub-dub!" beat the drum.

"Into place!" shouted a stentorian voice.

"Ready?"

"One--two--Boom!"

They were off in fine style, Jerome quickly showing the lead, and Rube gaining gradually upon him towards the middle of the course. To one spectator it was more interesting than the sword-dance, more exciting than a steeple-chase. But the eager spectators at the starting place could see very little beyond a certain point, owing to the crowd of boys and men which lined the sides of the track and closed up as the runners passed. They could hear vociferous yelling and screaming, sometimes the outcry, "Devonhough ahead!" and then, again, "Hurrah for Rutland!" and, at the last, a tremendous whooping and cheering and clapping of hands, in which no name was at first distinguishable. Then, amid the unbounded enthusiasm of the multitude, the victor was lifted above the heads of the crowd and brought back in triumph.

Mell had scarcely moved from the spot where Rube left her. She had had some time for reflection, and had profited by it, to such an extent, that she now felt quite miserable. That was the way with Mell, and continues to be the way with Mell's kind. They make a practice of hitching together the cart of Unthought and the sure-footed beast Think-twice; the cart in front, the horse in the rear; and if, under such circumstances the poor brute, nine times out of ten, lands his living freight into very hot water, too hot for their tender feelings, who is to blame for it?

Some very strange thoughts coursed through the girl's mind. Now, suppose it was Rube seated up there on the heads of an idolizing populace, and it became incumbent upon her to fulfill that promise so rashly and foolishly given, could she do it? No! No! She would rather live a thousand years and scratch an old maid's head every hour in all those years, than marry Rube Rutland!

It made her sick to think about it; every nerve in her body recoiled; every good instinct within her lifted up a dissentient voice.

"Can't you see who it is?" She inquired hoarsely of her nearest neighbor, a much be-banged girl, who peered above the crowd from the top of a dry-goods box, with the cute expression of a fluffy-faced puppy, "Can't you see?"

"Not distinctly yet, but I think it is that young stranger, Rube Rutland's friend; I'm pretty sure it is."

"Thank God!" muttered Mell. She was ambitious, but she was not yet the hardened thing that ambition makes.

"My goodness!" suddenly exclaimed the girl on the box. "It isn't that strange young man! It is Rube Rutland! I can see him distinctly now. Oh, how glad I am! It is Rube Rutland, boys." "Rutland forever!" shouted back the boys.

In all that big crowd there was but one heart not glad. Rube was in the house of his friends, the other a stranger. County pride, State pride, local prejudice, all sided with Rube. Jerome was an alien. He had come there to beat "our boys," and one of our boys had beaten him. Huzza! Huzza! Shout the victory!

They did shout it with a noise whose loudness was enough to bring down the roof of heaven. Never had there been such a victory at a Grange picnic before.

Deafened by the noise Mell slunk back into the wood. All color forsook her face once more. She had played for high stakes, this ambitious girl; she had won her game, and in the winning cursed her own folly and realized with a pang of unspeakable bitterness, that a victory for which one pays too dear a price is the worst kind of defeat.

Released from the well-meant persecutions of his many admirers, Rube asked for his coat and things, and a fan, and was next subjected to a statement from the master of ceremonies.

"With this wreath," explained that individual, "you may crown the lady of your choice, crown her queen of Love and Beauty, and it will be her prerogative to award the other prizes won on this occasion. Who is the fortunate lady?"

Every woman in hearing distance held her breath, every man opened wide his ears.

"Miss Mellville Creecy."

"Whom did he say?" queried Miss Josey, tremendously excited and not quite certain she had heard aright. Miss Josey was nibbling at a peach; she nibbled no more. Though blessed with an excellent appetite, Miss Josey in her hungriest moment was more eager to hear something new than eat something nice.

"Did you say Mell, Rube?"

"I did," said Rube.

It struck the crowd speechless. What? Rube Rutland, the son of an ex-Governor, an ex-Judge, an ex-Senator, dead now, but dead with all his titles on him; Rube Rutland, the greatest catch in the State, going to crown Mellville Creecy, daughter of that old ignoramus who made "fritters" of the King's English, and dug potatoes, and hoed corn, and ploughed in the fields with his own hands? The thing was preposterous! It was a thing, too, to be resented by his friends and equals.

Miss Rutland drew her brother aside.

"Rube, you cannot mean it! You surely have some sense! A little, if not much! You can't crown that obscure girl with the cream of the county, your own personal friends, all around you."

"Can't I?" said Rube. "I can and _will!_ The cream of the county may go to--anywhere." Rube closed up blandly: "I will not limit them in their choice of locations. That would be not only ungenerous but ungentlemanly."

"Rube," persisted Miss Rutland, "do listen to reason. What will mother say? What will everybody say?"

"Say what they darned please!"

Rube was first of all a freeborn American--secondly, an aristocrat.

"What's the use of being somebody if you've got to knuckle down to what people say?"

"But you are not obliged to crown anybody," insinuated Clara. "Rather than crown this low-born girl, make some one your proxy. Jerome would--"

"Oh, I have no doubt, with pleasure! You are a deep one, Clara, but you'll wear no crown this day. Might as well give it up."

So she perceived, and turned off in a rage, first informing him that he always had been, and always would be an unconscionable ass.

"You have fully decided, then?" questioned the master of ceremonies. "I have," Rube told him, beginning to get put out. Pretty Mell might well have been a scare-crow, such consternation had she created amongst them all. "I decided some time ago. Will it be necessary for me to mount a tree-top and blow a clarion blast before I can make you all understand that I am going to crown Mellville Creecy, and nobody else?"

"Certainly not, certainly not," hastily replied the master of ceremonies. He too was disappointed; he had a sister. Was there ever a man in power who didn't have a sister?--who didn't have a good many, all wanting crowns?

"Will you make a speech?"

"Nary speech," declared Rube, laughing. "I'm not so swift in my tongue as my legs! See here, Cap'n, there's no occasion for an unnecessary amount of tomfoolery about this thing. Some gentleman bring Miss Creecy forward. I'll put this gewgaw on her in a jiffy, and that'll be the end of it!"

Rube smiled softly to himself. That was very far from being the end of it.

"Mell! Mell!" screamed Miss Josie, running up to her _protegé_, the bearer of astonishing news, "you don't know what's going to happen! You'd never guess it! Rube is going to crown you, my pretty darling! You are to be queen of Love and Beauty."

"But, I'd rather not," said Mell, drawing back.

"Rather not?" screamed Miss Josey. "Did anybody ever before hear of a woman who would rather not be a queen--a queen in the hearts of men?"

"I don't see how you can help it," continued Miss Josey. Mell did not, either, alas! "But I don't wonder you feel a little frightened about it. It is such a wonderful thing for Rube to do: but Rube has two eyes in his head, Rube has, and knows the prettiest girl in the county when he sees her! This thing is going to be the making of you, Mell (rather say the undoing, Miss Josey) so don't be so frightened, but hold your head high, and bear your honors bravely, and remember all eyes are upon you. The rest of the girls are fairly dying with envy, don't forget that!"

This last remark brought Mell to her senses. Not one of them but would gladly stand where she stood--gladly put themselves in her shoes if they could. Rube was not a mate, as mating goes, to be met with every day in the year. The sugared point of this timely suggestion served Miss Josey's purpose effectually. It stilled the wild throbbing in the girl's heart, brought the blood back to her face, and turned the purple of such wondrous hue in her eyes, to the softest black; with intensity of gratification, Jerome himself was forgotten for the nonce.

Miss Josey, still in a flutter of delight, now proceeded to put on her sash, to replace the knot of ribbons at her throat, to pass her hands assuagingly across Mell's wilderness of frolicsome hair, and to put an extra touch or two to her simple toilette generally; whispering words of stimulation and encouragement all the while.

Thoroughly put to rights, Miss Josey placed the girl's hand into that of a very grand personage--the president of the Grange, in fact--who led her gallantly to the spot selected for the coronation ceremonies. There stood the hero of the day. He advanced a step or two as she drew near, he bowed low, and then in a distinct voice with a somewhat heightened color, but in his usual simple, straightforward manner, said: "Miss Creecy, I beg you will do me the honor to accept this trophy of my victory."

Miss Creecy silently bowed her head; he placed the wreath upon it, and lo! what has become of our rustic maiden? She is a Queen!

Nevertheless, she immediately fell back again into Miss Josey's hands, who hastened to push the crown this way and then that,--forward a little, and then backward a little--just one barley-corn this side and just one the other; until the magical spot of perfect-becomingness having been reached, she wisely let it be. As soon as the crowd caught sight of this bright splendor of yellow hair, surmounted by a wreath of flowers, the shouting and yelling re-commenced; and when it was passed with electric swiftness from mouth to mouth, that the head of the Rutland family, the owner of an honored name and a big estate, had chosen for his queen, not the daughter of a rich planter or a great statesman, but a child of the yeomanry, a ripple of intense excitement flashed through the multitude, and enthusiasm knew no bounds.

"Rutland for the people, and the people for Rutland!" was the joyous outpouring of the common heart. A sentiment which only subsided occasionally, to be renewed with increased vigor and manifold cheers.

"I see your game," said the secretary of the Grange to Rube, with a sly wink. "You are going to run for the Legislature?"

"Your penetration surprises me," returned Rube with a laugh. "What a pity the voting couldn't be done now; I'd be willing to risk a couple of thousand on my own election, if it could!"

"It's awfully becoming to her, isn't it?" inquired Jerome, speaking to Clara, and referring to the crown which sat upon the queen's head.

"I don't think so," returned Clara, "not in the least becoming. It doesn't suit the color of her hair."

"Sure enough! I had forgotten that. We bought it to suit yours, didn't we? It is too bad! but never mind; we'll come in for the second prize, certain."

"Not I!" exclaimed Clara, with a toss of her head. "It is first or none with me. There is something mean, little, contemptible, about a second prize, just like all second-rate things! Having failed in securing the first, were I in your place, I would not try for the second."

And she left him, much angered.

"Whew!" softly whistled Jerome. "It strikes me that what pleases one woman, doesn't please another. Why is that? It also strikes me that it's no use trying to please any of 'em. A man can't; not unless he converts himself into a sort of synchronous multiplex machine, and tries seventy-five different ways all at once."

The stream of people now poured in one direction,--towards royalty. Queens differ; but there is a something about every one of them which fetches the crowd. While this one stood hemmed in on all sides, an object of curiosity to all classes and conditions, all eager for a sight of her, some eager to be made known to her, others wanting to catch a look, a word, a smile, Mell heard some one at her elbow say, softly:

"Mellville."

Turning, she confronted Jerome. In a flash, her whole appearance changed. The moment before she had been a gracious sovereign, accepting with queenly grace the homage of her loyal subjects. Now, she was an outraged monarch jealous of her rank, standing on her dignity.

"How dare you, sir!" asked Mell, eyeing him haughtily and drawing herself up to her fullest height. "How dare you to speak to me! How dare you touch me! I have not the honor of your acquaintance, sir!"

Jerome was undeniably astonished; but this was not the time, not the place to indulge in a feeling of astonishment, or to make an exhibition of himself or her.

"Your Majesty," said Jerome, with his characteristic coolness, "will graciously pardon me. The crowd is great, it pressed heavily upon all sides and I have not been able to resist it."

He fell back at once, and Mell bowed, just as if nothing had happened, to the gentleman, whom the master of ceremonies was in the act of introducing to her.

In the crush, Jerome encountered Rube. He had been called off on some matter under discussion among those running the shebang--Rube's way of putting it--and was now endeavoring to push his way back to Mell.

"How-do, old fellow?" said Jerome, by way of congratulation.

"Tip-top!" said Rube, by way of thanks, and seizing his friend's hand he wrung it as if his intention was to wring it clean off. "You're a trump!"

"Don't mention it!" begged Jerome. He began to laugh again. For some reason the whole thing was excessively amusing to Jerome.

"But I _will_ mention it," persisted Rube. "I'll thank you for it to my dying day. It was so self-sacrificing on your part, considering everything."

"Oh, was it?" exclaimed his companion, choking down his risibles. "Well--ah--I don't exactly feel it that way. A mere trifle."

"Not to me," declared Rube.

"Perhaps not to me, either," conceded Jerome, looking on the subject more seriously. "For Clara--"

"You can patch up Clara," Rube suggested, soothingly.

"Do you think so? It's a rankling _casus belli_ at present, I can tell you! But how about your rustic beauty, eh, Rube? Is she pleased? Does she like it?"

"Pleased? Like it? You bet she does! She's delighted!"

"No one has introduced me yet," Jerome next remarked, quite incidentally. "And I am sure if her Gracious Majesty smiles upon any of her loyal subjects it ought to be me."

"That's so! So come right along now." They reached her side.

"Mell, here's the very best fellow in the world," said Rube, out of the fullness of his heart, forgetting the prescribed forms of etiquette in the absorption of warm feeling.

Mell had noted their approach. She was not taken unawares. She bent her head slightly to the newcomer, she looked him over for a whole minute, it seemed, before she opened her lips and said:

"How do you do, Mr. Very-Best-Fellow-in-the-World?"

Those near enough to hear roared with laughter, for the young queen's manner made the whole thing so absurdly funny; and perhaps there is nothing a crowd so much enjoys as the taking down of a person whom they regard in the light of one much needing to be taken down.

"His name is Devonhough," Rube hastened to explain, not relishing the laugh against his friend at this particular time by his particular fault. "Mr. Devonhough, Miss Creecy. He is my very best friend, Mell. Shake hands with him."

Mell did so; but without the faintest glimmering of a smile, and with such glacial dignity as fairly charged the atmosphere with iciness. Not content with this, she met all his subsequent efforts to cultivate her acquaintance with the briefest and chilliest repulses.

Rube was much concerned. He saw dimly that his best friend had not, somehow, made a favorable impression upon his future wife; but he could not tell the why or wherefore. While he wondered within him what he could do to put things on a pleasanter footing between them, someone else demanded his attention.

"See here," said Jerome, as soon as Rube's back was turned. "I hope you now consider me sufficiently punished. I hope you feel even. I hope you won't treat me to any more state airs. I am tired of them. Your Majesty, let me tell you something. Mark well my words. It is to me, not Rube, you owe your present exaltation."

"_To you!_"

The unsmiling countenance now broke into a ripple of scorn.

"What a ridiculous thing for you to say!"

"The whole thing has been ridiculous," said Jerome. "I never in my whole life ever enjoyed anything so much. 'Tis the one grain of truth which gives point to the ridiculous. Think of Rube, dear fellow, so anxious to crown you, knowing nothing, suspecting nothing, begging me not to run fast, and I, so ten thousand times more anxious than he could possibly be, to have you crowned."

"_You?_"

"Yes. _Me!_ Don't you know, in your heart, Mellville, that I wanted you crowned?"

"No, I know nothing of the kind! When a man wants a thing done, he does it with his own hand; when he does not want it done, or cares not much about it, he does it with another man's hand. Had you been anxious you would not have left it to Rube."

"But with that wreath in my own hand, Mell, I was morally bound to put it upon another head."

"Ah, indeed! Why?"

Jerome did not answer immediately. When he did, it was with averted eyes, and with some impatience, and not in reply to her first question at all, but her quick repetition of his own words, "Morally bound, eh?"

"Yes, Mellville. You forget I am a guest in her mother's house."

"I do not forget it! I remember it every hour in the whole twenty-four; but does that make it incumbent upon you to ignore me? Jerome, look me in the face. What is Clara Rutland to you?"

"Nothing!" exclaimed he, savagely, between compressed lips. "Less than nothing! A hundred times to-day I have wished her at the bottom of--"

"There! No use to send her there _now_. It's too late!"

The knowledge of what she had done, the wretchedness she saw it was destined to entail upon her, all this while couchant like a wild beast within her, now uprose into her expressive features. Jerome was struck with it.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"You will know soon enough," she responded.

He stooped to pick up the handkerchief she had dropped, and in restoring it, his hand, so cool and steady, came in contact with hers, so hot and tremulous; it touched and lingered, lingered long, and clung in a tender pressure; while a voice so low and firm, a voice, oh! so faint and sweet, stole its way into her ear, murmuring but one word, one little, fond word, which moved her in the strangest way, which thrilled, yet soothed her. Cooler than snow it fell upon her burning cheeks, warmer than a sunbeam into her freezing heart. That little game with Rube passed out of her memory.

But looking up all too soon, she saw him. He smiled upon her. He was glad to see that she and Devonhough were getting along quite pleasantly.

"I wish you would go away!" she suddenly exclaimed, turning upon her companion rudely. "Go back to Clara Rutland! You have no business here! I do not believe a word you have said to me! I yet fail to comprehend why a man may not be the master of his own actions."

"Heigh-ho!" sighed Jerome. "Just so it is in life. Just as a man begins to think he has put everything in order, and settled the question, here comes chaos again. You do not understand that, Mell? Well, I will tell you. Every man has a master--circumstance. On my side, I am surprised that you, with all your quickness of apprehension, have not been able to see clearer and deeper into this subject. You ought to have known, you must have felt that I had some good reason for acting towards you as I have to-day. Have you been true to your promise to trust me--and trust me blindly? I fear not. You have been cruelly angry with me ever since this morning, when I dared not speak."

"And why was it that you dared not speak?" demanded Mell, her lip curling contemptuously, but with a tremolo movement in her voice. "Does it then require some courage for a man, in your position to speak to a poor girl like me? Rube does not think so."

"With Rube it is different."

"_It is_, very different. There is no false pride about Rube."

"And I hope there is none about me. But, Mell, you do not in the least understand my position."

"I know as much about it as I care to know. Henceforth, Mr. Devonhough, let us be strangers."

"We can never be strangers," said Jerome. He was growing earnest; he spoke very low and with that rapidity of utterance which accompanies excited feelings. "This no time nor place, Mell, for such an explanation; but here, and now, I will make it. I cannot longer exist under the ban of your displeasure. Know then, dear, that I would not speak to you this morning for your own sweet sake--not mine. I was driven to it to protect your good name, and keep you out of the mouths of those shallow-pated creatures, who have nothing else to talk about but other people's failings. Had Clara Rutland once seen me speak to you--had she for one moment suspected the least acquaintance between us, that hydra-headed monster, Curiosity, would have lifted its unpitying voice in a hundred awkward questions: 'How did you come to know Mell Creecy? Where did you meet her? Who introduced you to her?' And so on to the end of a long chapter. I did not wish to say, for your sake, that I had never met you anywhere but in a cornfield. I did not wish to say, for your sake, that we had became acquainted in a very delightful, but by no means conventional, manner. I have thought it best, all along, to keep the fact of our acquaintance in the background, until we were brought together in some way perfectly legitimate and customary. Always for your sake, dear, not mine. Now you know in part; to-morrow I will make a clean breast of all my difficulties; so disperse these clouds, and give me one sweet look ere I go."

Instead of that, Mell swallowed a lump in her throat which felt as big as her head. She studiously avoided, for the rest of the day, any further speech with Jerome. His explanation was plausible enough on its face; but Mell was in no condition of mind to draw conclusions which might stand the test of reason, or be satisfactorily demonstrated on geometrical principles; and nothing that Jerome could say was now calculated to act as a sedative on Mell's nerves. She kept whispering to herself, "He feels it, yes, he feels it;" and thus nourished the firmness and the bravado necessary to her in the further requirements of her high position. She needed it all, and more, when it came to bestowing upon Jerome a handsome pair of spurs, as the second prize of the day. Certainly he cared for her, or why this glow on his clear-cut face, or why this light in his speaking eyes now bent upon her. Mell turned her head quickly.

"I can't understand why you don't like Devonhough," Rube remarked, noticing the movement. "I think it odd. He carries things with a high hand among the girls, I can tell you. Most all of 'em are dead in love with him."

"And do you wish me added to the list?" interrogated Mell, finding herself in a tight place, and hardly knowing how to get out of it.

"Well, no; I don't!" laughed Rube, much appreciating the sly humor of the question.

By seven o'clock the day's festivities were concluded; and then ensued a melting of all hostile elements into a homogeneous mass, all ravenous after iced-lemonade and home-made cake, and a heterogeneous devouring of the same; after which, the crowd, well pleased, but pretty well fagged out, turned their faces homeward, under a sun still shining, but shorn of its hottest beams.

No one will gainsay the statement that our heroine has made great social strides in one summer's day. In the morning a simple country girl, poor in pocket, humble in rank, unknown in society, seated beside Miss Josey in the little pony phaeton, full of fair hopes and inspirations; in the evening the affianced wife of the best-born and most eligible young man in the county; returning to the old farm-house in grand style, leaning back on soft cushions, beside her future lord, in a flashy open carriage drawn by a ravishing pair of high mettled roans.

Ambitious, indeed, must be that girl not satisfied with this wonderful result of one single operation in matrimonial stocks. And yet Mell is not happy. She forgets to give heed to what Rube is saying; she forgets almost to answer him back; so full of regret is she for her own lost self. She had had a thousand longings to get out of her old self, and out of her old life, and now, on the threshold of a new existence, Mell finds herself with only one desire--just to get back where she came from. If only she could--oh! if only she could, most gladly would this lately crowned queen have relinquished the glories of empire, the spoils of captive hearts, the trophies of social triumphs, the high emprise of a brilliant future, only to be simple Mell once more.

Ah, poor Mell! Not for sale now. Sold!