University of Virginia Library

35. CHAPTER XXXV.
HOW MISS FANNY MADE MERRY WITH THE PASSION OF MR.
VERY.

Verty approached the two young girls and took off his hat.

“Good morning, Redbud,” he said, gently.

Redbud blushed slightly, but, carried back to the old days by
Verty's forest costume, quickly extended her hand, and forgetting
Miss Lavinia's advice, replied, with a delightful mixture of kindness
and tenderness:

“I'm very glad to see you, Verty.”

The young man's face became radiant; he completely lost
sight of the charge against the young lady made in Miss Sallianna's
letter. He was too happy to ever think of it; and would
have stared Redbud out of countenance for very joy and satisfaction,
had not Miss Fanny, naturally displeased at the neglect
with which she had been treated, called attention to herself.

“Hum!” said that young lady, indignantly, “I suppose, Mr.
Verty, I am too small to be seen. Pray, acknowledge the fact of
my existence, sir.”

“Anan?” said Verty, smiling.

Fanny stamped her pretty foot, and burst out laughing.

“It's easy to see what is the matter with you!” she laughed.

“Why, there's nothing,” said Verty.

“Yes, there is.”

“What?”

“You're in love.”

Verty laughed and blushed.

“There!” cried Fanny, “I knew it.”

“I believe I am.”

“Listen to him, Redbud!”

“She knows it,” said Verty.

“Hum! I don't see how anybody can help knowing it.”

“Why?”

“Because it is plain.”

“Ah?”

“Yes, sir; this very moment you showed it.”

“Yes—I believe I did.”

“Odious old thing!”

“Who?”

“Why, Miss Sallianna, sir—I don't care if you are paying your
addresses! I say she's an odious old thing!—to be giving herself
airs, and setting her cap at all our beaux!”

Verty stared, and then laughed.

“Miss Sallianna!” he cried.

“Yes, sir!”

“I'm in love with her!”

“You've just acknowledged it.”

“Acknowledged it!”

“There!” you're going to deny your own words, like the rest
of your fine sex—the men.”

“No—I did'nt say I was in love with Miss Sallianna.”

“Did'nt he, Redbud?” asked Fanny, appealing to her friend.

“No,” said Verty, before she could reply; “I said I was in
love with Redbud!”

And the ingenuous face of the young man was covered with
blushes.

Fanny fairly shook with laughter.

“Oh,” she screamed, “and you think I am going to believe
that—when you spend the first half an hour of your visit with

Miss Sallianna—talking, I suppose, about the `beauties of
nature!”'

And the young girl clapped her hands.

“I wanted”—commenced Verty—

“Oh, don't tell me what you wanted!” cried Fanny; “you
saw in the garden here two nice young girls, if I do say it—”

“You may—!”

“I am not to be led off in that way, sir! I say you saw two
agreeable young ladies here evidently not indisposed to talk with
visitors, as it's a holiday—and in spite of that, you pass your
time in the house with that old Sallianna, cooing and wooing
and brewing,” added Miss Fanny, inventing a new meaning for
an old word on the spur of the moment, “and after that you
expect us to believe you when you say you are not in love with
her—though what you see to like in that old thing it would take
a thousand million sybils, to say nothing of oracles and Pythonesses,
to explain!”

With which exhausting display of erudition, Miss Fanny lay
back on her trellised seat, and shook from the point of her
slippers to the curls on her forehead with a rush of laughter.

Redbud had recovered from her momentary confusion, and,
with a beseeching glance at Fanny, said to Verty:

“How much better you look, Verty, in this dress—indeed
you look more homelike.”

“Do I?” said the happy Verty, bending his head over his
shoulder to admire the general effect; “well, I feel better.”

“I should think so.”

“The other clothes were like a turkey blind.”

“A turkey blind?

“Oh, you smile!—but you know, when you are lying in the
blind, the pine limbs rub against you.”

“Yes.”

“Then they did'nt suit me.”

“No,” assented Redbud.

“I don't dance the minuet—so I did'nt want high-healed
shoes—”

Fanny began to laugh again.

“Nor a cocked hat; the fact is, I do not know how to bow.”

“See! Come, Mr. Fisher-for-Compliments!” cried Fanny.

“Oh, I never do!”

“Well, I believe you don't.”

“Does anybody?”

“Yes; that odious cousin of mine—that's who does—the conceited
coxcomb!”

“Your cousin?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Who is it?”

“Ralph Ashley.”

“Oh—and he comes to see you—and—Miss Sallianna; she
said—”

Verty's head drooped, and a shadow passed over his ingenuous
face.

“There, you're thinking of Miss Sallianna again!”

“No—no,” murmured Verty, gazing at Redbud with a melancholy
tenderness, and trying to understand whether there could
possibly be any foundation for Miss Sallianna's charge, that that
young lady was in love with Mr. Ralph Ashley.

“Could it be? Oh, no, no!

“Could what be?” asked Fanny.

For once Verty was reserved.

“Nothing,” he said.

But still he continued to gaze at Redbud with such sad tenderness,
that a deep color came into her cheek, and her eyes were
cast down.

She turned away; and then Miss Lavinia's advice came to her
mind, and with a sorrowful cloud upon her face, she reproached
herself for the kindness of her manner to Verty, in their present
interview.

“I think I'll go and gather some flowers, yonder,” she said,
smiling faintly, and with a sad, kind look to Verty, in spite of all.
“Fanny and yourself can talk until I return, you know—”

“Let me go with you,” said Verty, moving to her side.

Redbud hesitated.

“Come, Redbud!” said Verty, persuasively smiling.

“Oh, no! I think I would like to get the one's I prefer.”
And she moved away.

Verty gazed after her with melancholy tenderness—his face lit
up with the old dreamy Indian smile. We need not say that the
notable scheme suggested by Miss Sallianna—namely, his making
love to some one else to try Redbud—had never crossed the ingenuous
mind of the young man. From that pure mirror the
obscuring breath soon disappeared. He did not wish to try
Redbud—he loved her too much; and now he remained silent
gazing after her, and wholly unconscious of the existence of Miss
Fanny.

That young lady pouted, and uttered an expressive “hum!”

Verty turned his eyes absently toward her.

“You can go, sir, if you don't like my society—I am not
anxious to detain you!” said Miss Fanny, with refreshing
candor.

“Go where?” said Verty.

“After Redbud.”

“She don't want me to.”

“Hum!”

And this little exelamation indicated the light in which Fanny
regarded the excuse.

Verty continued to gaze toward Redbud, who was gathering
flowers.

“How kind and good she is!” he murmured.

And these words were accompanied by a smile of so much
tender sincerity, that Fanny relented.

“Yes, she is!” said that young lady; “I'm glad to see

that some of your sex, sir, have a little taste. It is not their
failing.”

“Anan!” said Verty, smiling.

Fanny laughed; and her good humor began to return completely.

“I know some who are utterly deficient,” she said.

“In what?”

“Taste.”

“Yes.”

And Verty gazed after Redbud.

Fanny burst out laughing; but then remembering her promise
to Redbud, to treat Verty well, and amuse him, checked this exhibition
of satirical feeling, and said:

“Your taste, Mr. Verty, is such that I ought to quarrel with
it—but I'm not going to;—no, not for fifty thousand worlds!
If I have any quarreling to do, it will be with some one else!”

“With whom?”

“That coxcomb cousin of mine, Ralph Ashley.”

Verty's countenance became clouded; it was the second time
his rival's name had been uttered that morning.

“He is a fop,” said Fanny—“a pure, unadulterated, presumptuous
and intolerable fop. As I live, there he is coming up the
road! Oh, won't we have fine times—he promised to show me
his college album!”

And the impulsive Fanny clapped her hands, and more loudly
than ever. Five minutes afterward Mr. Ralph Ashley dismounted
at the door of the Bower of Nature.