Part 14 (1/2)

said Uncle Jake in one of his half-audible sneers.

”Well,” contended Dawn, ”men always sneer at women for doing in a small degree what men do fifty times worse. If a pretty barmaid comes to town all the men are after her like bees, and if a pretty woman stood for parliament the men would go off their heads about her, and yet they get their hair off terribly if a woman happens to prefer a nice gentlemanly man to a big, old, fat beer-barrel, with his teeth black from tobacco and his neck gouging over his collar from eating too much. Can I join the committee, grandma?”

”If it's proper, and he's my man, you can, an' work instead of me, but I must hear them both first.”

”If Walker could get you to make a speech for him, we'd all vote for him in a body,” laughed Eweword; but Dawn replied--

”Oh, you, I suppose you say that to every girl.”

Eweword sizzled in his blushes, while Ernest's face slightly cleared at this rebuff dealt out to another.

Grandma brought in the coffee and grumbled to Dawn about Carry's absence.

”That Larry Witcom ain't no monk, and while a girl is in my house I feel I ought to look after her. I believe in every one having liberty, but there's reason in everythink.”

The girl did not appear till after the young men had gone and Dawn and I had withdrawn, but we heard grandma's remonstrance.

”That feller, I told you straight, was took up about a affair in a divorce case, an' it would be as well not to make yourself too cheap to him. I don't say as most men ain't as bad, only they're not caught and bowled out; but w'en they are made a public example of, we have to take notice of it. Marry him if you want--use your own judgment; he'll be the sort of feller who'll always have a good home, and in after years these things is always forgot, and it would be better to be married to a man that had that against him (seein' they're all the same, only they ain't found out) and could keep you comfortable, than one who was _supposed_ to be different an' couldn't keep you. But if you ain't goin' to marry him, don't fool about with him. An' unless he gets to business an' wants marriage at once, don't take too much notice to his soft soap, as you ain't the only girl he's got on the string by a long way.”

”He acknowledges about the fault he did in his young days, and he says it's terribly hard that it's always coming against him now,” said Carry.

”Well, if a woman does a fault she has to pay for it, hasn't she?--that's the order of things,” said grandma.

”But this was when he was young and foolish,” continued Carry.

”Yes, the poor child, he was terribly innocent, wasn't he? an' was got hold of by some fierce designing hussy--they always are--and it was all her fault. It always is a woman's fault--only for the women the men would be all angels and flew away long ago,” said grandma sarcastically. ”They'll give you plenty of that kind of yarn if you listen to 'em; an' if you are built so you can believe it, well an'

good, but the facts was always too much of a eye-opener for me,” and with that the contention ended.

”Yes, Carry's the terriblest silly about that Larry Witcom,” said Dawn; ”she swallows all he says. She said to me yesterday, 'He seems to be terribly gone on me.' 'Yes,' I said. 'You keep cool about his goneness. Wait till he gets down on his knees and bellows and roars about his love, and take my tip for it he could forget you then in less than a week.' I've seen men pretending to be mad with love, and the next month married to some one else. Men's love is a thing you want to take with more discount than everything you know. You might be conceited enough to believe them if you went by your own lovers, but you want to look on at other people's love affairs, and see how much is to be depended on there, and measure your own by them, and it will keep your head cool,” said this girl, who had the most sensible head I ever saw in conjunction with her degree of beauty.

She had contracted the habit of slipping into my room for a talk before going to bed, and as her bright presence there was a delight to me, I encouraged her in it. The gorgeous kimono was a great attraction; she loved it so that I had given it her after the first night, but did not tell her so, or she would have carried it away to her own room, where I would have been deprived of the pleasure of seeing it nightly enhance the loveliness of her firm white throat and arms.

”How did you and Dora get on together?” she presently inquired.

”Well, you see we didn't elope; how did you and Ernest manage?”

”Well, you see we didn't elope,” she laughed.

”No, but you might have arranged such a thing.”

”Arranged for such a thing!” she said scornfully. ”I'm not in the habit of trucking with other people's belongings.”

”What do you mean?”

”It was you who said something about his young lady this afternoon--as far as I can see he doesn't behave much as if he had one.”

So it was my chance remark that had run her wheel out of groove during the last few hours!