Paul Leicester Ford

“ But, alas, how is humanity constituted! The next morning, Freddy, after a final look at himself in a tall mirror, remarked to the vision: “Yes, that’s very tony. Now, I’ll take a walk on the Avenue, so as to give the girls a treat.” As for Frances, after an hour’s rapid walk with Champney in the crisp, sunny air, she came down to the breakfast-table, and said: “Yes, steward, I’ll begin with fruit and oatmeal, and then I’ll have chocolate, and beefsteak, and an omelette, and fried potatoes, and hot rolls, and marmalade. ”

“ Potter. Quick!”
Both had arisen from the sofa, and Freddy looked about in a very badly perplexed condition. He was quite willing, but about what was he to be quick?
“Sit down in that chair,” whispered the girl, pointing to one at a more than proper distance, and Freddy sprinted for it, and sat down. The girl resumed her seat on the little sofa, and putting her hands in a demure position, rather contradictory to her quick breathing and flushed cheeks, began: “As you were saying, the De Reszke brothers were the only redeeming— Oh! Good evening, Mr. Potter.” ”

“ Every now and then I could hear the blows of the quirt behind me; and when, occasionally, the grey passed us, I could see his sides gored and bleeding where they had been torn by the spurs, and bloody foam was all round his jaw, and flecked his chest and flanks. But he knew what he meant to do, and he did it without any heed to his own suffering. There was 36joy when the filly told us that every time the swish of the quirt was heard she could feel her rider shiver a little; and Felicia must have been distressed at the look of the horse, for she cut the ride short by suggesting a return home. ”

“ Freddy has been spoken of in the masculine gender, because, as Shakespeare wrote: “The Lord made him, therefore let him pass for a man.” Otherwise his manliness was open to debate. Lovable the girl unquestionably was, or at least very fast verging upon it, but it passeth human intelligence how Freddy could inspire any sort of feeling except an intense longing for a gun loaded with goose-shot.
“And that we should have loved each other for so long, and never either of us dreamed that we cared one little bit for each other,” continued the girl. ”

“ Stuart. Nonsense, my boy! Go and tell Miss Wortley that you love her before it’s too late. Make her the prettiest compliment a man can pay a woman, and if she has the bad taste to think it’s her money and not her beauty and sweetness, you are no worse off. ”

“ In the meantime my Major was explaining to Miss Fairley that the government had sent him to New London to inspect the ordnance at Forts Trumbull and Griswold, and that he found it pleasanter to stay in Norwich, and run down by train to New London for his work. That’s the way humans lie when it doesn’t deceive any one and it isn’t expected that it will. ”

“ They lifted my poor dear into it, and a pretty gloomy procession took up its walk for Yantic.
“When we arrived at the Fairleys’ house, there was a to-do, as you may imagine. He was carried upstairs, while I went for the doctor, taking a groom with me, because humans are so stupid that they only understand each other. I taught that groom a thing or two about what a horse can do in the way of speed that I don’t believe he has ever forgotten.”
“Did you do better than 1.351⁄2?” inquired the Kentuckian; but Reveille paid no heed to the question. ”

“ Lord Ferrol, will you tell me how you like your tea?
Lord F. Strong, please, with plenty of cream and sugar.
Amy (admiringly) . Ah, how nice it is to find a man who takes his tea as it should be taken! (looking at men scornfully) . It is really a mental labor to pour tea for the average man.
Dennis. Average is a condition common to many; therefore we are common. Yet somebody said the common people were never wrong.
Helen. Well, they may never be wrong, but they can be uncommonly disagreeable! ”

“ Drops blotter in rage. Amy (shrieking) . Oh!
Helen (intensely) . What!! (Grabs at blotter eagerly.) Here, you read too slowly, let me. (Amy holds mirror.) “Coddled, caressed, till we shall call you tenderfoot. But a word in your ear! Make yourself rather disagreeable. Dress in the wrong clothes at meals. Use the words ‘nasty’ and ‘beastly’ frequently, and of all things meet the girls half-way in their attentions. Your name is George Augustus—” It ends there. ”

“ Omitting all hearsay and they-say knowledge, I was her forty-seventh victim; and as pœnologists affirm that more than half of the criminal acts are undiscovered, it can at once be seen how society is menaced by people with good hearts. ”

“ I shook my head dejectedly. ‘I’m very much off my feed,’ I told them. ‘My Major 14is not able to ride, and won’t be for a long time, so I’m horribly afraid I’ve been sold. I really wouldn’t have believed it of him!’
“‘What things man is capable of doing!’ sighed the filly, with tears of sympathy in her eyes.
“‘Cheer up, comrade,’ cried the grey, consolingly. ‘Even if you are sold, you might be worse off. You are still a saddle-horse, and as Miss Gaiety and I both have good stables, you probably will have the same luck, since you are in our set. ”

“ Not knowing that most bachelors are regular club men merely because it is the nearest approach to home life they can attain, she dwelt on his having been apparently wedded to these comforters of men, before marriage, and inferred a return to his former daily frequenting of them. ”

“ Enter Rose, l., with box of chocolates and book. Rose. What is it?
Dennis. Ask Mrs. Wycherly.
Rose. What is the excitement, Mrs. Wycherly?
George. Louder.
Amy (loudly) . Mrs. Wycherly!
Mrs. W. (starting) . Oh! What?
George. That is just the problem. Is he a what, or isn’t he?
Dennis (bitterly) . I don’t believe it will make the least difference even if he proves a “What is it.”
Steven (more bitterly) . No, we fellows see how it will be! The moment “me lud” arrives, we shall be nowhere with you girls.
George. George Augustus Guelph Dunstan, Earl of Ferrol and Staunton! ”

“ Stuart. But as he gets more interested, he changes. He makes his attentions and 212feelings too marked—something no girl likes. Then he is cross and moody when she does not give him most of her time and dances. He is inclined to be jealous of every Tom, Dick, and Harry who comes near her, and absurdly tries to dictate what she shall do and not do; which she resents. In short, the very strength of his love makes him an entirely different kind of a man. He is neither companionable nor entertaining; he is both surly and passionate. ”

“ De Witt, crossly.
“Just as much good as your method. You can no more stop boys’ and girls’ love by calling it foolishness than the courts can. If you do as you propose, you’ll probably have a runaway match, or some other awful bit of folly.” ”

“ Yantic was nothing but a little village clustered about a great woollen-mill, without any stable or hotel to live in, so we had to put up at Norwich, a place seven miles away; and it was a case of put up, I tell you, in both food and attendance! For a decently brought up horse to come down to a hotel livery-stable is a trial I never want to go through again. In the field I never minded what came, but I do hate musty corn and damp bedding.
“You girls would have laughed to see the roan filly’s face the first time we met on the road. ”

“ We really had a very good time getting those gentians! Nothing was ever done with the flowers, however, owing to circumstances which constitute the most painful part of my confession. For a horse and an officer, I had been pretty tricky already, but that was nothing to the fraud I tried to perpetrate that morning. After our riders had mounted for the return to Yantic, I suggested to Miss Gaiety what I thought would be a winning race for my Major, which was neither more nor less than that she should run away, and let him save Miss Fairley. ”

“ Margaret chatted over the meal in her usual entertaining, happy mood, telling him the news she had already extracted from the morning’s paper.
“She’s too clever ever to nag a man,” thought Harry, and assured that he was not to be taken to task, he became equally amiable, and told her whom he had seen at the club, and of his score. ”

“ Potter, coming back from his thoughts; “I always enjoy myself, and I find that other people do the same.” Then he again relapsed into meditation.
“Isn’t he just as horrid as can be?” raged Frances, inwardly. “He believes just because some women think him clever, and because men like him, and because he’s a good business man, and because mama’s always praising him to his face, as she would any one who was papa’s partner, that he is perfect. And no matter how you try to snub him, he is so conceited that he won’t see it. ”

“ If you think there’s any particular pleasure in sitting in a snowdrift, there’s one outside, right against the verandah.
Steven. That would never do at present. It might result in a cold, and so destroy our little plan of winning the maiden affections of—well, I won’t give him a name till I have seen him!
Helen. It is hard to put up with foreign titles, but as long as our government will not protect that industry, the home product is so rude, boorish, VULGAR, and YOUNG, that we cannot help—
Rose (interrupting) . Listen! (Pause.) There’s the carriage. ”

“ The discrimination originated neither in excessive fondness of fact, nor in the slightest dislike of fiction; being solely due to a greater preference for the stories they themselves created than for those they found in books. ”

“ Stuart (laughing) . Will you tell me why a woman’s reason is always a “because,” and a man’s is always a “she”?
Fred. She‘s an excuse for anything!
Stuart. Even for Charlie Newbank?
205Fred (rising angrily) . Look here, Mr. Stuart, I’ll take a good deal from you; but there is a limit.
Stuart (soothingly) . Excuse me, my boy. It is brutal in me, but I am trying to see if I can’t laugh you out of it.
Fred (sits chair l. as if discouraged) . No use! As they say out West, it’s come to stay and grow up with the country.
Stuart. Oh, I didn’t mean your love for Miss Wortley. ”

“ Lewis arrive to-day, and the thing’s probably as good as decided.’
24“‘My Major is very resolute,’ said I.
“‘So is a mule,’ snapped Miss Gaiety, ‘but we don’t think the more of him for that.’”
The polo pony gave a horse laugh as he said, “That was one on you.”
“It was,” acknowledged Reveille; “and I regret to say it made me lose my temper to such an extent that I retorted, ‘I can’t say much for the taste of your woman!’
“‘No,’ assented the filly; ‘if what you and Mr. Solitaire say is true, she’s taking the worse of the two. But then, a human can’t help it. ”

“ Exit Polly l. d. Stuart. It’s better to be born lucky than rich. (Pats domino tenderly, and arranges it neatly in chair c.) You’re luckier, though, for you belong to the dearest and most heartless woman in this world. ”

“ We horses, with the aid of the men and guns, held the Weldon railroad, and Lee and his mules stopped holding Richmond.”
“Doesn’t he tell a story beautifully?” remarked Bubbles, in a distinctly audible aside to Lassie.
8“I’ve never known a better raconteur,” answered Lassie, in a stage whisper of equal volume.
“Lay you a peck of oats to a quart that the girls get that secret out of him,” whispered the Majors saddle-horse, who, as a Kentuckian of thoroughbred stock, had sporting and race-track proclivities.
“Not with me!” denied the second cob. “Besides, no gentleman ever bets on a certainty. ”

“ Puts arms round Mrs. W.’s neck. Amy (beseechingly) . Oh, Mrs. Wycherly, please do!
Rose (kneeling imploringly) . Do, Mrs. Wycherly!
Mrs. W. (suspiciously) . What mischief are you concocting now? (rising and going to l. d., followed by all the girls) . Well, I won’t promise not to, but I will hold my tongue till I see that I had better speak.
Helen. Oh, you dear mama!
Mrs. W. (laughing) . Temper your justice with mercy. ”

“ Er, the fellows are laying bets as to whether we shall ever see him there again. The odds are six to one on the club,—but the fellows don’t know you, you know.”
“I want to offer you my heartiest congratulations,” gushed the girl who had tried for him. “Mr. Tyler has always been one of my best friends, and I am sure you will be very happy. He isn’t, of course, very fond of women’s society, but— Have you asked him to resign from his clubs?”
⁂ “Don’t you want to sit down, Harry?” asked Margaret, making room on the little sofa beside the fire. ”

“ Do you hitch up to that post?”
“Do they all know your secret, Reveille?” asked Lassie, ingratiatingly.
6“They think they do,” replied the veteran. “They don’t, though,” he added; and then, heaving a sigh, he continued: “But the roan filly did, and Mr. Lewis’s big grey, and dear old Sagitta—that was the Russian wolf-hound, who died before any of you youngsters joined our set.”
“Then I fail to perceive,” remarked the polo pony, “why they should treat you differently, if they are ignorant of the circumstances to which you refer.” ”

“ You are such a good business man, and papa and mama are so delighted, that I know you have the best of it.”
“Of course I have. And she’s sitting beside me now. But nothing mercenary 82to-night, Madam,” ordered Champney. “Cupid, not cupidity.”
“Well, Champney, dear, at least do tell me how you found out about—about—” Frances stopped there.
“Never,” persisted Champney, nestling back on the sofa and laughing.
“I don’t think it’s nice for a man to have secrets from his wife,” reproved Frances, taking an eminently feminine view of man’s knowledge. ”