The Mystery of Metropolisville Part 2

"Mr. Plausaby has selected an admirable site," Charlton heard the fat gentleman remark, and as Mr. Plausaby was his own step-father, he began to listen. "Pretty sharp! pretty sharp!" continued the fat gentleman. "I tell you what, Mr. Minorkey, that man Plausaby sees through a millstone with a hole in it. I mean to buy some lots in this place. It'll be the county-seat and a railroad junction, as sure as you're alive. And Plausaby has saved some of his best lots for me."

"Yes, it's a nice town, or will be. I hold a mortgage on the best eighty--the one this way--at three per cent and five after maturity, with a waiver. I liked to have died here one night last summer. I was taken just after supper with a violent--"

"What a beauty of a girl that is," broke in the fat gentleman, "little Katy Charlton, Plausaby's step-daughter!" And instantly Mr. Albert Charlton thrust his head out of the coach and shouted "h.e.l.lo, Katy!" to a girl of fifteen, who ran to intercept the coach at the hotel steps.

"Hurrah, Katy!" said the young man, as she kissed him impulsively as soon as he had alighted.

"P'int out your baggage, mister," said Jim, interrupting Katy's raptures with a tone that befitted a Superior Being.

In a few moments the coach, having deposited Charlton and the fat gentleman, was starting away for its destination at Perritaut, eight miles farther on, when Charlton, remembering again his companion on the front seat, lifted his hat and bowed, and Miss Minorkey was kind enough to return the bow. Albert tried to a.n.a.lyze her bow as he lay awake in bed that night. Miss Minorkey doubtless slept soundly. She always did.

CHAPTER IV.

ALBERT AND KATY.

All that day in which Albert Charlton had been riding from Red Owl Landing to Metropolisville, sweet Little Katy Charlton had been expecting him. Everybody called her _sweet_, and I suppose there was no word in the dictionary that so perfectly described her. She was not well-read, like Miss Minorkey; she was not even very smart at her lessons: but she was sweet. Sweetness is a quality that covers a mult.i.tude of defects. Katy's heart had love in it for everybody. She loved her mother; she loved Squire Plausaby, her step-father; she loved cousin Isa, as she called her step-father's niece; she loved--well, no matter, she would have told you that she loved n.o.body more than Brother Albert.

And now that Brother Albert was coming to the new home in the new land he had never seen before, Katy's heart was in her eyes. She would show him so many things he had never seen, explain how the pocket-gophers built their mounds, show him the nestful of flying-squirrels--had he ever seen flying-squirrels? And she would show him Diamond Lake, and the speckled pickerel among the water-plants. And she would point out the people, and entertain Albert with telling him their names and the curious gossip about them. It was so fine to know something that even Albert, with all his learning, did not know. And she would introduce Albert to _him_. Would Albert like _him_? Of course he would. They were both such _dear_ men.

And as the hours wore on, Katy grew more and more excited and nervous.

She talked about Albert to her mother till she wearied that worthy woman, to whom the arrival of any one was an excuse for dressing if possible in worse taste than usual, or at least for tying an extra ribbon in her hair, and the extra ribbon was sure to be of a hue entirely discordant with the mutually discordant ones that preceded it. Tired of talking to her mother, she readily found an excuse to buy something--ribbons, or candles, or hair-pins, or dried apples--something kept in the very miscellaneous stock of the "Emporium," and she knew who would wait upon her, and who would kindly prolong the small transaction by every artifice in his power, and thus give her time to tell him about her Brother Albert. He would be so glad to hear about Albert. He was always glad to hear her tell about anybody or anything.

And when the talk over the counter at the Emporium could not be farther prolonged, she had even stopped on her way home at Mrs. Ferret's, and told her about Albert, though she did not much like to talk to her--she looked so penetratingly at her out of her round, near-sighted eyes, which seemed always keeping a watch on the tip of her nose. And Mrs. Ferret, with her jerky voice, and a smile that was meant to be an expression of mingled cheerfulness and intelligence, but which expressed neither, said: "Is your brother a Christian?"

And Katy said he was a dear, dear fellow, but she didn't know as he was a church-member.

"Does he hold scriptural views? You know so many people in colleges are not evangelical."

Mrs. Ferret had a provoking way of p.r.o.nouncing certain words unctuously--she said "Chrishchen" "shcripcherral," and even in the word evangelical she made the first _e_ very hard and long.

And when little Katy could not tell whether Albert held "shcripcherral"

views or not, and was thoroughly tired of being quizzed as to whether she "really thought Albert had a personal interest in religion," she made an excuse to run away into the chamber of Mrs. Morrow, Mrs. Ferret's mother, who was an invalid--Mrs. Ferret said "inva_leed_," for the sake of emphasis. The old lady never asked impertinent questions, never talked about "shcripcherral" or "ee-vangelical" views, but nevertheless breathed an atmosphere of scriptural patience and evangelical fort.i.tude and Christian victory over the world's tribulations. Little Katy couldn't have defined, the difference between the two in words; she never attempted it but once, and then she said that Mrs. Ferret was like a crabapple, and her mother like a Bartlett pear.

But she was too much excited to stay long in one place, and so she hurried home and went to talking to Cousin Isa, who was sewing by the west window. And to her she poured forth praises of Albert without stint; of his immense knowledge of everything, of his goodness and his beauty and his strength, and his voice, and his eyes.

"And you'll love him better'n you ever loved anybody," she wound up.

And Cousin Isa said she didn't know about that.

After all this weary waiting Albert had come. He had not been at home for two years. It was during his absence that his mother had married Squire Plausaby, and had moved to Minnesota. He wanted to see everybody at home.

His sister had written him favorable accounts of his step-father; he had heard other accounts, not quite so favorable, perhaps. He persuaded himself that like a dutiful son he wanted most to see his mother, who was really very fond of him. But in truth he spent his spare time in thinking about Katy. He sincerely believed that he loved his mother better than anybody in the world. All his college cronies knew that the idol of his heart was Katy, whose daguerreotype he carried in the inside pocket of his vest, and whose letters he looked for with the eagerness of a lover.

At last he had come, and Katy had carried him off into the house in triumph, showing him--showing is the word, I think--showing him to her mother, whom he kissed tenderly, and to her step-father, and most triumphantly to Isa, with an air that said, "_Now_, isn't he just the finest fellow in the world!" And she was not a little indignant that Isa was so quiet in her treatment of the big brother. Couldn't she see what a forehead and eyes he had?

And the mother, with one shade of scarlet and two of pink in her hair-ribbons, was rather proud of her son, but not satisfied.

"Why _didn't_ you graduate?" she queried as she poured the coffee at supper.

"Because there were so many studies in the course which were a dead waste of time. I learned six times as much as some of the dunderheads that got sheepskins, and the professors knew it, but they do not dare to put their seal on anybody's education unless it is mixed in exact proportions--so much Latin, so much Greek, so much mathematics. The professors don't like a man to travel any road but theirs. It is a reflection on their own education. Why, I learned more out of some of the old German books in the library than out of all their teaching."

"But why didn't you graduate? It would have sounded so nice to be able to say that you had graduated. That's what I sent you for, you know, and I don't see what you got by going if you haven't graduated."

"Why, mother, I got an education. I thought that was what a college was for."

"But how will anybody know that you're well-educated, I'd like to know, when you can't say that you've graduated?" answered the mother petulantly.

"Whether they know it or not, I am."

"I should think they'd know it just to look at him," said Katy, who thought that Albert's erudition must be as apparent to everybody as to herself.

Mr. Plausaby quietly remarked that he had no doubt Albert had improved his time at school, a remark which for some undefined reason vexed Albert more than his mother's censures.

"Well," said his mother, "a body never has any satisfaction with boys that have got notions. Deliver me from notions. Your father had notions.

If it hadn't been for that, we might all of us have been rich to-day.

But notions kept us down. That's what I like about Mr. Plausaby. He hasn't a single notion to bother a body with. But, I think, notions run in the blood, and, I suppose, you'll always be putting some fool notion or other in your own way. I meant you to be a lawyer, but I s'pose you've got something against that, though it was your own father's calling."

"I'd about as soon be a thief as a lawyer," Albert broke out in his irritation.

"Well, that's a nice way to speak about your father's profession, I'm sure," said his mother. "But that's what comes of notions. I don't care much, though, if you a'n't a lawyer. Doctors make more than lawyers do, and you can't have any notions against being a doctor."

"What, and drug people? Doctors are quacks. They know that drugs are good for nothing, and yet they go on dosing everybody to make money. It people would bathe, and live in the open air, and get up early, and harden themselves to endure changes of climate, and not violate G.o.d's decalogue written in their own muscles and nerves and head and stomach, they wouldn't want to swallow an apothecary-shop every year."

"Did you ever!" said Mrs. Plausaby, looking at her husband, who smiled knowingly (as much as to reply that he had often), and at Cousin Isa, who looked perplexed between her admiration at a certain chivalrous courage in Albert's devotion to his ideas, and her surprise at the ultraism of his opinions.

"Did you ever!" said the mother again. "That's carrying notions further than your father did. You'll never be anything, Albert. Well, well, what comfort can I take in a boy that'll turn his back on all his chances, and never be anything but a poor preacher, without money enough to make your mother a Christmas present of a--a piece of ribbon?"

"Why, ma, you've got ribbons enough now, I'm sure," said Katy, looking at the queer tri-color which her mother was flying in revolutionary defiance of the despotism of good taste. "I'm sure I'm glad Albert's going to be a minister. He'll look so splendid in the pulpit! What kind of a preacher will you be, Albert?"

"I hope it'll be Episcopal, or any way Presbyterian," said Mrs. Plausaby, "for they get paid better than Methodist or Baptist. And besides, it's genteel to be Episcopal. But, I suppose, some notion'll keep you out of being Episcopal too. You'll try to be just as poor and ungenteel as you can. Folks with notions always do."

"If I was going to be a minister, I would find out the poorest sect in the country, the one that all your genteel folks turned up their noses at--the Winnebrenarians, or the Mennonites, or the Albrights, or something of that sort. I would join such a sect, and live and work for the poor--"

"Yes, I'll be bound!" said Mrs. Plausaby, feeling of her breastpin to be sure it was in the right place.

"But I'll never be a parson. I hope I'm too honest. Half the preachers are dishonest."

Then, seeing Isa's look of horrified surprise, Albert added: "Not in money matters, but in matters of opinion. They do not deal honestly with themselves or other people. Ministers are about as unfair as pettifoggers in their way of arguing, and not more than one in twenty of them is brave enough to tell the whole truth."

"Such notions! such notions!" cried Mrs. Plausaby.

And Cousin Isa--Miss Isabel Marlay, I should say for she was only a cousin by brevet--here joined valiant battle in favor of the clergy. And poor little Katy, who dearly loved to take sides with her friends, found her sympathies sadly split in two in a contest between her dear, dear brother and her dear, dear Cousin Isa, and she did wish they would quit talking about such disagreeable things. I do not think either of the combatants convinced the other, but as each fought fairly they did not offend one another, and when the battle was over, Albert bluntly confessed that he had spoken too strongly, and though Isa made no confession, she felt that after all ministers were not impeccable, and that Albert was a brave fellow.

And Mrs. Plausaby said that she hoped Isabel would beat some sense into the boy, for she was really afraid that he never would have anything but notions. She pitied the woman that married _him_. She wouldn't get many silk-dresses, and she'd have to fix her old bonnets over two or three years hand-running.