CHAPTER XVIII.
UNDER AN OLD BONNET.
Vesta had been sitting half an hour beside her unconscious husband,listening to his broken speech, and thinking upon the rapidity of eventsonce started on their course, like eaglets scarcely taught to fly beforethey attack and kill, when the sound of carriage-wheels, arrested at thedoor, called her to the window, and Tom, the mocking-bird, which hadbeen comparatively quiet since he found his master snugly cared for, nowbegan to hop about, fly in the air, and sing again:
"Sweet--sweet--sweetie! come see! come see!"
Vesta saw Meshach's wiry, deliberate colored man step down and turn thehorses' heads, and there dropped from the carriage, without using thecarriage-step, at a leap and a skip, a young female object whose headwas invisible in an enormous coal-scuttle bonnet of figured blue chintz.However quick she executed the leap, Vesta observed that the arrival hadforgotten to put on her stockings.
Before Vesta could turn from the window this singular object had dartedup the dark stairs of the old storehouse and thrown herself on thedelirious man's bed:
"Uncle, Uncle Meshach! air you dead, uncle? Wake up and kiss yourRhudy!"
She had kissed her uncle plentifully while awaiting the same of him, andthe attack a little excited him, without recalling his mind to anysustained remembrance, though Vesta heard the words "dear child," beforehe turned his head and chased the wild poppies again. Then the youngfemale, ejaculating,
"Lord sakes! Uncle don't know his Rhudy!" pulled her black apron overher head and had a silent cry--a little convulsion of the neck and notan audible sigh besides.
"She weeps with some refinement," Vesta thought; and also observed thatthe visitor was a tall, long-fingered, rather sightly girl of, probably,seventeen, with clothing the mantuamaker was guiltless of, and a hoopbonnet, such as old people continued to make in remembrance of thehigh-decked vessels which had brought the last styles to them when theirancestors emigrated with their all, and forever, from a land of _modes_.The bonnet was a remarkable object to Vesta, though she had seen somesuch at a distance, coining in upon the heads of the forest people tothe Methodist church. It resembled the high-pooped ship of Columbus,which he had built so high on purpose, the girls at the seminary said,so as to have the advantage of spying the New World first; but it alsoresembled the long, hollow, bow-shaped Conestoga wagons of which Vestahad seen so many going past her boarding-school at Ellicott's Millsbefore the late new railroad had quite reached there. As she had oftenpeered into those vast, blue-bodied wagons to see what creatures mightbe passengers in their depths, so she took the first opportunity of theblue scuttle being jolted up by the mourner to discern the face within.
It was a pretty face, with a pair of feeling and also mischievous browneyes, set in the attitude of wonder the moment they observed anotherwoman in the room. The skin was pale, the mouth generous, the nose long,like Milburn's, but not so emphatic, and the neck, brow, and form of theface longish, and with something fine amid the wild, cow-like stare shefixed on Vesta, exclaiming, in a whisper,
"Lord sakes! a lady's yer!"
Then she threw her apron over the Conestoga bonnet again, and held it upthere with her long fingers, and long, plump, weather-stained wrists.
Vesta looked on with the first symptoms of amusement she had felt sincethe morning she and her mother laughed at the steeple-crown hat, as theylooked down from the windows of Teackle Hall upon the man already herhusband. That morning seemed a year ago; it was but yesterday.
"Old hats and bonnets," Vesta thought, "will be no novelties to me byand by. This family of the Milburns is full of them."
Then, addressing the new arrival, Vesta said,
"This is your uncle, then? Where do you live?"
"I live at Nu _Ark_," answered the miss, taking down the black apron andlooking from the depths of the bonnet, like a guinea-pig from his hole.
"If she had said 'the Ark' without the 'New,'" Vesta thought, "it wouldhave seemed natural."
"Your uncle has a high fever," Vesta said, kindly; "he is not in danger,we think. It was right of you to come, however. Now take off yourbonnet. What is your name?"
"Rhudy--I'm Rhudy Hullin, ma'am."
"Rhoda--Rhoda Holland, I think you say."
"Yes'm, Rhudy Hullin. I live crost the Pookamuke, on the Oushin side,out thar by Sinepuxin. I don't live in a great big town like PrincessAnne; I live in Nu Ark."
At this the girl carefully extricated her head from the Conestogascuttle, looked all over the bonnet with pride and anxiety, and thencarefully laid it on the top of her uncle's hat-box.
"Uncle Meshach give it to me," she said, with a sly inclination towardsthe sick bed. "Misc Somers made it. Uncle, he bought all the stuff; MiscSomers draw'd it. Did you ever see anything like it?"
"Never," said Vesta.
"Well, some folks out Sinepuxin said it was a sin and a shame--sechextravagins; but Misc Somers she said Uncle Meshach was rich an' hadn'tbut one Rhudy. It ain't quite as big as Misc Somers's bonnet, but it'sdraw'd mour."
Here Rhoda gave a repetition of what Vesta had twice before observed--aninaudible sniffle, and, being caught in it, wiped her nose on her apron.
"Take my handkerchief," Vesta said, "you are cold," and passed over hercambric with a lace border.
"What's it fur?" Rhoda asked, looking at it superstitiously. "You don'twipe your nuse on it, do you? Lord sakes! ain't it a piece of your neckfixin'?"
Vesta felt in a good humor to see this weed of nature turn thehandkerchief over and hold it by the thumb and finger, as if she mightbecome accountable for anything that might happen to it.
"I got two of these yer," she said; "Misc Somers made 'em outen a frock.They ain't got this starch on 'em; they're great big things. I alwaysforgit 'em. My nuse wipes itself."
"Now come near the fire and warm your feet," said Vesta; "for your ridefrom the oceanside, this cold morning, through the forests of thePocomoke, must have chilled you through. Lay off your blanket shawl."
Rhoda laid the huge black and green shawl, that reached to her feet, onthe green chest, and smoothed it with evident pride.
"Uncle Meshach bought that in Wilminton," she said; "ain't it beautiful!I never wear it but when I come over yer or go to Snow Hill. Snow Hill'ssech a proud place!"
She had a way of laughing, by merely indenting her cheeks, without asound, just as she expressed the sense of pain; the only differencebeing in the beaming of her eyes; and Vesta thought it had somethingcontagious in it. She would laugh broadly and in silence, as if she hadbeen put on behavior in church, and there had adopted a grimace to makethe other girls laugh and save herself the suspicion.
As she pulled her skirts down to her feet, Vesta's observation wasconfirmed that Rhoda had no stockings on, and she could not helpexclaiming,
"My dear child, what possessed you to ride this October morning onlyhalf dressed? You might catch your death."
Rhoda caught her nose on the half sniffle, raised and dimpled her cheeksin a sly laugh, and cried,
"Lord sakes! you mean my legs? Why, I ain't got but two pairs ofstockings, an' Misc Somers is a wearin' one of' em, and the ould pair'sin the wash. It's so tejus to knit stockings, and sech fun to gobarefoot, that I don't wear' em unless Misc Somers finds it out. Why,the boys can't see me!"
She grimaced again so naturally and engagingly that Vesta had to laughquite aloud, and saw meantime that the young woman's oft-cobbled shoescovered a slender foot a lady might have envied.
"Now, Rhoda," Vesta said, almost indignantly, "why did you not ask yourwealthy uncle for some good yarn stockings?"
"Him? Why, ma'am, he's got so many pore kin, if he begin to give' em allstockings, he'd go barefoot himself."
"Has he other nieces like you?"
"No." The girl quietly grimaced, with her brown eyes full of laughter."There's plenty of others, but none like Rhudy; the woods is full ofthem others."
"So you are the favorite? Now, what was your uncle going to do with allhis mone
y?"
"Lord sakes!" Rhoda said; "he was going to marry Miss Vesty with it.That's what Misc Somers said."
The mocking-bird had been striking up once or twice in the conversation,and now pealed his note loud:
"Vesta, she! she! she! she-ee-ee!"
A tingle of that superstition she had felt more than once already, inher brief knowledge of this forest family, went through Vesta's veinsand nerves, and she silently remarked,
"How little a young girl knows of men around her--what satyrs are takingher image to their arms! These people knew he loved me, when I knew notthat he ever saw me."
She addressed the niece again:
"Rhoda, did your uncle say he loved Miss Vesta?"
"No'm. He never said he luved nothing; but I heard Tom, themocking-bird, shout 'Vesty,' and saw a lady's picture yonder betweengrandpar and grandmem, and told Misc Somers, and she says, 'Your UncleMeshach's in luve!' Oh, I was right glad of it, because he was so sadand lonesome!"
The fountain of sympathy burst up again in Vesta's heart, and she feltthat there were compensations riches and station knew not of in humblealliances like hers.
"Rhoda," she said, going to the young girl and putting her hand upon hersoft brown hair, "you have not noticed the new picture of a lady hangingup here, have you?"
"No'm, not yet. Everything is so quare in this room sence I saw it last,I hain't seen nothin' in it but you. Now I see the carpet, an' thebrass andirons, an' the chiney, an'--Lord sakes! is that a picture? Why,I thought it was you."
"It is, Rhoda. I am Vesta; I am your new aunt."
The girl made one of her engaging, dimpled, silent laughs, as if bystealth again, changed it into a silent cry by a revulsion as natural,and rose to her feet and took Vesta in her arms.
"I'm so glad, I will cry a little," Rhoda simpered, her eyes all dewy;"oh, how Misc Somers will say, 'I found it out first!'"
Tom kept up a whistling, self-gratulating little cry, as if he had hisown thoughts:
"Sweety! sweety! sweet! Vesty, see! see! see!"
Vesta felt a chain of happy thoughts arise in her mind, which sheexpressed as frankly as the girl of forest product had spoken, that shemight not retard the welcome of these homely friendships:
"Yes, Rhoda, I am thankful to find a social life open to me where thereseemed no way, and brooks and playmates where everything looked dry. Youcome here like a sunbeam, God bless you! I can hear you talk, and teachyou what little I know, and we will relieve each other, watching him."
She felt a slight modification of her joy at this reminder, but the birdseemed to teach her patience, as he suggested, hopping and flying in theair,
"Come see! come see! come see!"
"Yes," thought Vesta, "_come and see!_ It is good counsel. I begin tofeel the breaking of a new sense,--curiosity about the poor and lowly.My education seems to have closed my observation on people of my ownrace, who daily trode almost upon my skirts, and whom I never saw--whomit was considered respectable not to see--while even my colored servantsenjoyed my whole confidence because they were my slaves. Yet, inmisfortune, to these plain white people I must have dropped; and thenRoxy and Virgie, sold to some temporary rich man, would have been aboveme, slaves as they would continue! How false, how fatal, both slaveryand proud riches to the republicans we pretend to be! Compelled 'to see'at last, I shall not close my eyes nor harden my heart."
The maid from Newark had meantime quietly inspected the rag carpet, thecloth hangings, the fairy rocker, and all the acquisitions of heruncle's abode, and Vesta again observed that she was of slender andwillowy shape and motion, unaffected in anything, not forward norexcited, and with the shrewd look so near ready wit that she could makeVesta laugh almost at will. Vesta showed her how to administer cooldrink and the sponging to the sufferer, and he saw them together with alook of inquiry which the febrile action soon drove away.
"Are your parents living, Rhoda?"
"No'm; they're both dead. My mother was Uncle Meshach's sister, and shemarried a rich man, who biled salt and had vessels an' kept tavern.Father Hullin died of the pilmonary; mar died next. Misc Somers broughtme up whar the tavern used to be. It ain't a stand no more. UncleMeshach owns it."
"Is it a nice place?"
"Now it ain't as nice as it use to be, Aunt Vesty"--the girl glidedeasily over what Vesta thought might be a hard word--"sence the shewsdon't stop thar no mour."
"The shoes? What is that?"
"The wax figgers and glass-blowers, and the strongis' man in the world.Did you ever see him?"
Vesta said, "No, dear."
"I saw him," Rhoda said, with a compression of her mouth and a gleam ofher eyes. "He bruke a stone with his fist and Misc Somers kep thestone, and what do you think it was?"
"Marble?"
"No'm; chork! He jest washed the chork over with a little shell orvarnish or something, and, of course, it bruke right easy; so he wasn'tthe strongest man in the world at all, and if Misc Somers ever see him,she'll tell him so."
"Is it a little or a large house, Rhoda?"
"Oh, it's a magnificins house, twice as big as this, with the roof bentlike an elefin's back, an' three windows in it--rale dormant windows,that looks like three eyes outen a crab, and a gabil end three rows ofwindows high, and four high chimneys. The rope-walker said it was fit tobe a rueyal palace. Then thar's the kitchen an' colonnade built on toit. It's the biggest house, I reckon, about Sinepuxin. Thatrope-walker's a mountin-bank."
"A mountain bank? You mean a mountebank--an impostor?"
"Yes'm,"--the mouth shut and the eyes flashed again. "He allowed he'dbreak the rupe after he'd walked on it, and he said it wasn't stretchedtight enough, and went along a feeling of it; and Misc Somers found outevery time he teched of it he put on some bluestone water or somethin'else to rot it, so, of course, he bruke it easy. But Misc Somers's goingto tell him, if he comes agin, he's a mountin-bank. Lord sakes! sheain't afraid."
"So, since it has ceased to be a tavern, dear, you see no morejugglers?"
"The last shew there," Rhoda said, "was the canninbils and themissionary. The missionary had converted of 'em, and they didn't eat nomore; but he tuld how they used to eat people; and they stouled a ponyouten the stables an' run to the Cypress swamp, and thar they turned outto be some shingle sawyers he'd just a stained up. Misc Somers isa-waitin' for him. Lord sakes! she don't keer."
"And so you were an orphan, brought up at the old roadside stage-houseat Newark? And who is Mrs. Somers?"
"Misc Somers, she's a ole aunt of Par Hullin. She an' me live togethersence par and mar died of the pilmonary. Oh, I have a passel of beausthat takes me over to the Oushin on Sinepuxin beach, outen the way ofthe skeeters, an' thar we wades and sails, and biles salt and roastsmammynoes. Aunt Vesty, I can cut out most any girl from her beau; but,Lord sakes! I ain't found no man I love yet."
"I'm glad of that," said Vesta, "because you will then be satisfied withPrincess Anne. They say your uncle will be sick here several weeks, andwe can help each other to make him well. Now he is waking."
Milburn opened his eyes and sighed, and saw them together, and Rhodaheld back considerately while the young wife approached the bed. Helooked at her with a bewildered doubt.
"I thought they said you had gone forever," he murmured.
"No, I am come forever, or until you wish me gone."
"I told them so," he sighed; "I said, 'She has high principle, thoughshe can't love me.'"
"Uncle Meshach, give Auntie time!" cried Rhoda, with a quick divinationof something unsettled or misunderstood. "Don't you know your Rhudy?Even I was afraid of you till I was tuke sick and you thought it was thepilmonary and nursed me."
"You have a good niece," Vesta said, as her husband kissed the stranger;"and we shall love each other, I hope, and improve each other."
"Yes, that will be noble," he replied. "Teach her something; I havenever had the time. Oh, I am very ill; at a time like this, too!"
"Be composed, Mr. Milburn," the bride said; "it
is only Nature takingthe time you would not give her, and which she means for us to improveour almost violent acquaintance. I shall be very happy sitting here, andwish you would let your niece be with me; I desire it."
He tried to smile, though the strong sweat succeeding the fever brokeupon him from his hands to his face.
"She is yours," he said; "the best of my poor kin. Do not despise us!"
Vesta drew her arm around Rhoda and kissed her, that he might see it.
"What goodness!" he sighed, and the opening of his pores, as it let thefever escape, gave him a feeling of drowsy relief which Vestaunderstood.
"Now let us turn the covers under the edges, Rhoda," she said, "and putyour blanket-shawl over him, and he will get some natural sleep."
He turned once, as if to see if she was there, and closed his eyespeacefully as a child.
"Now, Rhoda," said Vesta, in a few minutes, "I hear papa's carriage atthe door, and, while he comes up, I shall ride back to see my mother andget a few things at home."
"Who is your poppy, Aunt Vesty?"
"Don't you know him?--Judge Custis, who lives in Princess Anne."
"Jedge Custis! Why, Lord sakes! he ain't your par, is he? Aunt Vesty,he's one of my old beaus."
The Judge brought with him Reverend William Tilghman, and Vesta, as shewas retiring, introduced Rhoda to both of them:
"This is Miss Rhoda--Mr. Milburn's niece."
Judge Custis, a trifle blushing, took both of Rhoda's hands:
"Ha, my pretty partner and dancing pupil! How are our friends at St.Martin's Bay and Sinepuxent? Many a sail and clam-bake we have had,Rhoda."
"You're a deceiver," Rhoda cried, with a dimpling somewhere between gleeand accusation. "I'm goin' to plosecute you, Jedge, fur not tellin' ofme you was a married man. My heart's bruke."
"Who could remember what he was, Rhoda, sitting all that evening besideyou at--where was it?"
"The Blohemian glass-blowers," Rhoda cried; "the only ones that evervisited the Western Himisfure. Jedge," with sudden impetuosity, "thatlittle one, with the copper rings in his years, wasn't a Blohemian atall. He lived up at Cape Hinlupen, an' Misc Somers see him thar when shewas a buyin' of herring thar. She's goin' to tell him, when she catcheshim at Nu-ark."
The young rector observed the flash of those bright eyes following thepleasing dimples, and the slips of orthography seemed to him never lessculpable coming from such lips and teeth.
"William," said Vesta, "come around this afternoon, and let us have ourusual Sunday reading-circle. Mr. Milburn will be awake and appreciateit, as he is one of your most regular parishioners. Rhoda, you canread?"
"Oh, yes'm. Misc Somers, she's a good reader. She reads the OldTestamins. The names thar is mos' too long for me, but I reads thePsalms an' the Ploverbs right well."
"Very well, then, we will read verse about, so that Mr. Milburn can hearboth our voices and his favorite minister's, too. You'll come, papa?"
"Yes, if I can. We have had a love-feast at Teackle Hall this morning,and your sister from Talbot is down, but I think I can get off."
"Lord sakes!" Rhoda said, looking at Mr. Tilghman candidly; "you ain't aminister now? Not a minister of the Gospil?"
"Unworthily so, Miss Rhoda."
"Well, I don't see how you was old enough to be convicted and learn itall, unless you was a speretual merikle. Misc Somers see one of 'em atJinkotig. They called him the enfant phrenomeny. He exhorted at fiveyear old, and at seven give his experyins."
"Rare, Miss Rhoda," the rector said, hardly able to keep his reverencein amusement at her impetuosity.
"Oh, he made a wild excitemins, Aunt Vesty. The women give each othertheir babies to hold while they tuk turns a-shouting. 'Yer, Becky, holdmy baby while I shout!' says one. 'Now, Nancy, hold mine while I shout!'To see that little boy up thar tellin' of his experyins was meriklus,an' made an excitemins like the high tides on Jinkotig that drowns' emout. But, Aunt Vesty, that little phrenomeny was a dwarf, twenty yearold, an' Misc Somers found it out and told about it."
"I'll be bound Mrs. Somers knows!" exclaimed the Judge.
"That she do," continued Rhoda, earnestly, with a slight sniffle of awell-modelled nose and a dimpling that argued to Vesta something tocome. "Misc Somers says you held one of them babies, Jedge, to let itsmother shout, and pretended to be under a conviction; an' that youbackslid right thar and was a-whisperin' to the other mother. Lordsakes! Misc Somers finds it all out."
"Well," said the Judge, finding the laugh against him, "I never didbetter electioneering than that day. By holding that baby five minutes Imade a vote, and the mother will hold it twenty years before she willmake a vote."
"Misc Somers says, Jedge, you hold the women longer than thar babies;but I told her you was in sech conviction you didn't know one from theother. 'Oh,' she says, 'he's sly and safe when he gits over yer on theWorcester side.' Misc Somers, she's dreadful plain."
William Tilghman, during the continuation of this colloquy, looked withinterest on the two young ladies: Vesta, the elder by two or threeyears, and richly endowed with the lights of both beauty andaccomplishments; the maid from the ocean side, plainer, and with noornament within or without; but he could foresee, under Vesta'sfostering, a graceful woman, with coquetry and fascination not whollylatent there; and, as his eyes met Rhoda's, he interpreted the look thatat a certain time of life almost every maiden casts on meeting a youngman--"Is he single?" She shot this look so archly, yet so strong, thatthe arrow wounded him a very little as it glanced off. He smiled, butthe consciousness was restored a moment that he was a young man still,as well as a priest. Love, which had closed a door like the portal of atomb against him, began to come forth like a glow-worm and wink its lampathwart the dark.
"She must come to Sunday-school," he thought, "if she stays in PrincessAnne. We will polish her."
The mocking-bird, not being satisfied with any lull in the conversation,"pearted up," as he saw Vesta withdraw, and cried,
"'Sband! 'Sband! Meee--shack! Mee-ee-ee-shack! See me! see me! Gents!gents! gents! genten! Sweet! sweetie! sweetie! Hoo! hoo! See! see!Vesty, she! Ha! ha!"
He flew in the air over his stirring master, as if doubting that all waswell since the strange lady, who had been so quiet all the morning, wasgone.
"That bird almost speaks," said William Tilghman; "I have spent many anhour teaching them, but never could make one talk like that."
"Maybe you had too much to teach to it," Rhoda Holland said; "it ain'toften they can speak, and they mustn't have much company to learn well.Uncle Meshach haint had no company but that bird for years. I reckonthe bird got mad and lonesome, and jest hooted words at him."
"What is it saying now?" Tilghman asked. "See! it is almost convulsivein its attempts to say something."
The gray bird, as impressive as a poor poet, seemed nearly in a state ofepilepsy to bring up some burden of oppressive sound, and, as theywatched it, almost tipsy with the intoxicant of speech, fluttering,driving, and striking in the air, it suddenly brought out a note liquidas gurgling snow from a bird-cote spout:
"L-l-lo-love! love! love! Ha! ha! L-l-love!"
"Well done, old bachelor!" Judge Custis remarked, in spite of his faggedface, for good resolution and yesterday's unbracing had left himsomewhat limp and haggard still. "He brings out 'love' as if he had madea vow against it, but the confession had to come. Many a monk would singthe same if instinct could find a daring word in his chorals. Thesemockers of Maryland were celebrated in the British magazines a hundredyears ago, and I recall some lines about them."
He then recited:
"'His breast whose plumes a cheerful white display, His quivering wings are dressed in sober gray, Sure all the Muses this their bird inspire, And he alone is equal to a choir. Oh, sweet musician! thou dost far excel The soothing song of pleasing Philomel: Sweet is her song, but in few notes confined, But thine, thou mimic of the feathery kind! Runs thro' all notes: thou only know'st them all, At once the copy and th' ori
ginal!'"
"That's magnificins!" Rhoda exclaimed, with quiet delight; "who is'fellow Mil,' Jedge?"
"Oh, that's the British nightingale. These American mocking-birdssurpass them as one of our Eastern Shore clippers outsails all the navalpowers of Europe."
"I've hearn 'The British Nightingale,'" Rhoda said, with a flash of hereyes; "he was a blind man with green specticklers that sang at Nu-ark,''ome, sweet 'ome'--that's the way he plonounced it--an' it affected ofhim so, he had to drink a whole tumbler of water, an' Misc Somers,spying around to see if he was the rale nightingale, she found it wasgin in that glass, and told about it."
Rhoda made even the minister laugh, as she indented her cheeks and casta sheep's glance at him and the Judge. He marvelled that such forestEnglish could be resented so little by his mind, but he thought,
"Never mind, she may have had no more lessons than the bird, whosedifficulty is even beautiful. But see! Mr. Milburn is wide awake. Myfriend, how do you feel?"
"Better, better!" murmured Milburn. "I cannot lie here any more. Thereis money, _money_, gentlemen, dependent on my getting about."
He started up with the greatest resolution and confidence, and fell uponhis head before he had left the coverlets.
"No, no!" said the Judge, as he and Tilghman picked Milburn up andarranged him as before. "Your will is matched this time, my braveson-in-law! You are back in the hut you have consumed, among the firesthereof, and the avenging blast of Nassawongo furnace burns in yourveins and cools you in the mill-pond alternately. Lie there and repentfor the injury you have done a spotless one!"
If Meshach heard this it was never known, but the unconscious orimpulsive utterance strengthened the impression with Tilghman and Rhodathat Vesta's marriage was not altogether voluntary, and produced on botha feeling of deeper sympathy and respect for her.
"Judge," the young minister said, "do good for evil, if evil there hasbeen! I have given him my hand sincerely; perhaps you can relieve hismind of some business care."
"Mr. Milburn," the Judge said, when he saw the resinous eyes rolltowards him again out of that swarthy face, now pale with weakness, "Iam out of a job now, and can work cheap. Let me do any errand for you."
A look of petulance, followed by one of inquiry, came up from Milburn'seyes, and he pressed his head between his wrists, as if to bring backthe blood that might propel his judgment. They heard him mutter,
"No business prudence--yet plausible, persuasive--might do it well."
The Judge spoke now, with some firmness:
"Milburn, there is no use of your rebelling. Here you are and here youwill lie till nature does her restoration, assisted by this medicine Ihave brought you. You must undergo calomel, and this quinine must set onits work of several weeks to break up the regularity of these chills. Inthe meantime, as your interests are also Vesta's, and Vesta's are mine,let me serve her, if not you."
The positive tone influenced the weakened system of the patient. Helooked at all three of the observers, and said to Tilghman, "William, Imight send you but for your calling; leave me with the Judge a littlewhile, both you and Rhoda."
Rhoda took the Conestoga bonnet from the top of the Entailed Hat box,and arrayed herself in it, to the rector's exceeding wonder.
"Let's you and me go take a little walk," she said, putting her hand inhis arm with a quiet confidence in which was a spark of Meshach's will."I ain't afraid of Princess Anne people, if they are proud. Mise Somerssays King Solomons was no better than a lily outen the pond, and said sohimself."
The young man, sincere as his humility was, blushed a little at the ideaof walking through his native town with that bonnet at his side, hebeing of one of the self-conscious, high-viewing families of the oldpeninsula--his grand-uncle the staff-officer of Washington, andmessenger from Yorktown to Congress with the news, "Cornwallis hasfallen;" but it was his chivalric sense, and not his piety, whichimmediately dispelled the last touch of coxcombry, when he felt that alady had requested him.
"With happiness, Miss Holland;" and he did not feel one shrinkingthought again as he ran the gantlet of the idle fellows of the town,many of them his former vagrant playmates. Rhoda was perfectly happy. Hewould have taken her to his grandmother's, with whom he kept house, butthat aristocratic old dowager might say something, he considered, todestroy Rhoda's confidence in her elegant appearance and easyvocabulary; and they walked past Teackle Hall, where Vesta saw them, andopened the door and made them come in and eat a little. Rhoda at firstshowed some uneasiness under this great pile of habitation, but Vestawas so natural and gracious that the shyness wore off, and, at a fittingmoment, the bride said:
"Rhoda, my dear, there is a bonnet up-stairs I expect to wear thiswinter, and I want to try it on you, whom I think it will particularlybecome."
Rhoda's quiet eyes flashed as she saw the new article and heard Vestapraise it, upon her head. The old bonnet had received a cruel blow, inspite of Mrs. Somers.
Tilghman, too, accused himself that he felt a little relieved when heescorted Rhoda back to Meshach's in another bonnet, and Vesta followed,with her great shaggy dog, Turk; she not unconscious--though serene andthoughtfully polite to all she knew--of people peering at her in wonderand excitement from every door and window of the town. The news wasworking in every household, from the servants in the kitchens to theaged people helped to their food with bib and spoon, that the fameddaughter of Daniel Custis was the prize of the junk dealer and usurerin "old town" by the bridge, who had enslaved a wife at last.