The Late Mrs. Null Part 25

"What is it?" she asked.

"I want you to go to Miss March, and endeavor, in some way--you will know how, better than I can tell you--to induce her to let me have a few words with her. If it is only here at this open window it will do."

Mrs Null laughed. "Imagine," she said, "a woman putting on a waterproof and overshoes, and coming out in the rain, to stand with an umbrella over her head, to be proposed to! That would be the funniest proceeding I ever heard of!"

Lawrence could not help smiling, though he was not in the mood for it.

"It may seem amusing to you," he said, "but I am very much in earnest. I am in constant fear that she will go away while I am confined to this house. Do you know how long she intends to stay?"

"She has not told me," was the answer.

"If you will carry it," he said, "I will give you a message for her."

"Why don't you write it?" said Miss Annie.

"I don't want to write anything," he said. "I should not know how it had been received, nor would it be likely to get me any satisfaction. I want a live, sympathetic medium, such as you are. Won't you do this favor for me?"

"No, I won't," said Miss Annie, her very decided tone appearing to give a shade of paleness to her features. "How often must I tell you that I will not help you in this thing?"

"I would not ask you," said Lawrence, "if I could help myself."

"It is not right that you should ask me any more," she said. "I am not in favor of your coming here to court Miss March, while my cousin is away, and I should feel like a traitor if I helped you at all, especially if I were to carry messages to her. Of course, I am very sorry for you, shut up here, and I will do anything I can to make you more comfortable and contented; but what you ask is too hard for me."

And, as she said this, a little air of trouble came into the large eyes with which she was steadfastly regarding him. "I don't want to seem unkind to you, and I wish you would ask me something that I can do for you. I'll walk down to Howlett's and get you anything you may like to have. I'll bring you a lot of novels which I found in the house, and which I expect, anyway, you will like better than those old-time books.

And I'll cook you anything that is in the cook-book. But I really cannot go wooing for you, and if you ask me to do that, every time I come near you, I really must--"

"My dear Mrs Null," interrupted Lawrence, "I promise not to say any more to you on this subject. I see it is distasteful to you, and I beg your pardon for having mentioned it so often. You have been very kind to me, indeed, and I should be exceedingly sorry to do anything to offend you.

It would be very bad for me to lose one of my friends, now that I am shut up in this box, and feel so very dependent."

"Oh, indeed," said Miss Annie. "But I suppose if you were able to step around, as you used to do, it wouldn't matter whether you offended me or not."

"Mrs Null," said Lawrence, "you know I did not mean anything like that.

Do you intend to be angry with me, no matter what I say?"

"Not a bit of it," she answered, with a little smile that brought back to her face that warm brightness which had grown upon it since she had come down here. "I haven't the least wish in the world to be angry with you, and I promise you I won't be, provided you'll stop everlastingly asking me to go about helping you to make love to people."

Lawrence laughed. "Very good," said he. "I have promised to ask nothing more of that sort. Let us shake hands on it."

He stretched his hand from the window, and Miss Annie withdrew from the folds of her waterproof a very soft and white little hand, and put it into his. "And now I must be off," she said. "Are you certain you don't want anything from the store at Howlett's?"

"Surely, you are not going as far as that," he said.

"Not if you don't want anything," she answered. "Have you tobacco enough to last through your imprisonment? They keep it."

"Now, miss," said Lawrence; "do you want to make me angry by supposing I would smoke any tobacco that they sell in that country store?"

"It ought to be better than any other," said Miss Annie. "They grow it in the fields all about here, and the storekeepers can get it perfectly fresh and pure, and a great deal better for you, no doubt, than the stuff they manufacture in the cities."

"When you learn to smoke," said Lawrence, "your opinion concerning tobacco will be more valuable."

"Thank you," she said, "and I will wait till then before I give you any more of it. Good morning." And away she went.

Lawrence shut down the window, and hopped back to the fire. "There is my last chance gone," said he to himself. "I suppose I may as well take old Mrs Keswick's advice, and wait for fair weather. But, even then, who can say what sort of sky Roberta March will show?" And, not being able to answer this question, he put two fresh sticks on the fire, and then sedately sat and watched their gradual annihilation. As for Miss Annie, she took her walk, and stepped along the road as lightly and blithely as if the skies had been blue, and the sun s.h.i.+ning; and almost before she knew it, she had reached the store at Howlett's. Ascending the high steps to the porch, quite deserted on this damp, unpleasant morning, she entered the store, the proprietor of which immediately jumped up from the mackerel kit at the extreme end of the room, where he had been sitting in converse with some of his neighbors, and hurried behind the counter.

"Have you any tea," said Miss Annie, "better than the kind which you usually sell to Mrs Keswick?"

"No, ma'am," said he. "We send her the very best tea we have."

"I am not finding fault with it," she said, "but I thought you might have some extra kind, more expensive than people usually buy for common use."

"No, ma'am," said he, "there is fancy teas of that kind, but you'd have to send to Philadelphia or New York for them."

"How long would that take?" she asked.

"I reckon it would be four or five days before you'd get it, ma'am,"

said the storekeeper.

"I am afraid," said Miss Annie, looking reflectively along the counter, "that that would be too long." And then she turned to go, but suddenly stopped. "Have you any guava jelly?" she asked.

The man smiled. "We don't have no call for anything as fancy as that, ma'am," he said. "Is there anything else?"

"Not to-day," answered Miss Annie, after throwing a despairing glance upon the rolls of calicoes, the coils of clothes-lines, the battered tin boxes of tea and sugar, the dusty and chimneyless kerosene lamps, and the long rows of canned goods with their gaudy labels; and then she departed.

When she had gone, the storekeeper returned to his seat on the mackerel kit, and was accosted by a pensive neighbor in high boots who sat upon the upturned end of a case of brogans. "You didn't make no sale that time, Peckett," said he.

"No," said the storekeeper, "her idees is a little too fancy for our stock of goods."

"Whar's her husband, anyway?" asked a stout, elderly man in linen trousers and faded alpaca coat, who was seated on two boxes of pearl starch, one on top of the other. "I've heard that he was a member of the legislatur'. Is that so?"

"He's not that, you can take my word for it," said Tom Peckett. "Old Miss Keswick give me to understand that he was in the fertilizing business."

"That ought to be a good thing for the old lady," said the man on the starch boxes. "She'll git a discount off her gwarner."

"I never did see," said the pensive neighbor on the brogan case, "how such things do git twisted. It was only yesterday that I met a man at Tyson's Mill, who'd just come over from the Valley, and he said he'd seen this Mr Noles over thar. He's a hoss doctor, and he's going up through all the farms along thar."

"I reckon when he gits up as fur as he wants to go," said the man on the starch boxes, "he'll come here and settle fur awhile."

"That won't be so much help to the old lady," said the storekeeper, "for it wouldn't pay to keep a neffy-in-law just to doctor one sorrel horse and a pa'r o' oxen."

"I reckon his wife must be 'spectin' him," said the man on the brogan case, "from her comin' after fancy vittles."

"If he do come," said the stout, elderly neighbor, "I wish you'd let me know, Tom Peckett, fur my black mar has got a hitch in her shoulder I can't understand, and I'd like him to look at her."

The storekeeper smiled at the pensive man, and the pensive man smiled back at the storekeeper. "You needn't trouble yourself about that young woman's husband," said Mr Peckett. "There'll be a horse doctor coming along afore you know it, and he'll attend to that old mar of yourn without chargin' you a cent."

CHAPTER XXI.