University of Virginia Library

4. 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 multitude
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 nobody 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 sueh 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—ribbens, 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 pronouncing 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 “invaleed,” 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 fortitude 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 crab-apple,
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 he 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. If people would bathe, and
live in the open air, and get up early, and harden themselves
to endure changes of climate, and not violate God'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.