"No! I guess we won't!" said the bouncing girl with great emphasis, and the color rose over more than one young face.
After that day Miss Lucinda received many a kind smile and hearty welcome, and never did anybody venture even a grimace at her expense. But it must be acknowledged that her dancing was at least peculiar. With a sanitary view of the matter, she meant to make it exercise, and fearful was the skipping that ensued. She chassed on tiptoe, and balanced with an indescribable hopping twirl, that made one think of a chickadee pursuing its quest of food on new-ploughed ground; and some late-awakened feminine instinct of dress, restrained, too, by due economy, indued her with the oddest decorations that woman ever devised. The French lessons went on more smoothly. If Monsieur Leclerc's Parisian ear was tortured by the barbarous accent of Vermont, at least he bore it with heroism, since there was nobody else to hear; and very pleasant, both to our little lady and her master, were these long winter evenings, when they diligently waded through Racine, and even got as far as the golden periods of Chateaubriand. The pets fared badly for petting in these days; they were fed and waited on, but not with the old devotion; it began to dawn on Miss Lucinda's mind that something to talk to was preferable, as a companion, even to Fun, and that there might be a stranger sweetness in receiving care and protection than in giving it.
Spring came at last. Its softer skies were as blue over Dalton as in the wide fields without, and its footsteps as bloom-bringing in Miss Lucinda's garden as in mead or forest. Now Monsieur Leclerc came to her aid again at odd minutes, and set her flower-beds with mignonette borders, and her vegetable-garden with salad herbs of new and flourishing kinds. Yet not even the sweet season seemed to hurry the catastrophe that we hope, dearest reader, thy tender eyes have long seen impending. No, for this quaint alliance a quainter Cupid waited,the chubby little fellow with a big head and a little arrow, who waits on youth and loveliness, was not wanted here. Lucinda's God of Love wore a lank, hard-featured, grizzly shape, no less than that of Israel Slater, who marched into the garden one fine June morning, earlier than usual, to find Monsieur in his blouse, hard at work weeding the cauliflower-bed.
"Good mornin', Sir! good mornin'!" said Israel, in answer to the Frenchman's greeting. "This is a real slick little garden-spot as ever I see, and a pootty house, and a real clever woman too. I'll be skwitched, ef it a'n't a fust-rate consarn, the hull on't. Be you ever a-goin' back to France, Mister?"
"No, my goot friend. I have nobody there. I stay here; I have friend here: but there,oh, non! je ne reviendrai pas! ah, jamais! jamais!"
"Pa's dead, eh? or shamming? Well, I don't understand your lingo; but ef you're a-goin' to stay here, I don't see why you don't hitch hosses with Miss Lucindy."
Monsieur Leclerc looked up astonished.
"Horses, my friend? I have no horse!"
"Thunder 'n' dry trees! I didn't say you hed, did I? But that comes o' usin' what Parson Hyde calls figgurs, I s'pose. I wish't he'd use one kind o' figgurin' a leetle more; he'd pay me for that wood-sawin'. I didn't mean nothin' about hosses. I sot out fur to say, Why don't ye marry Miss Lucindy?"
"I?" gasped Monsieur,"I, the foreign, the poor? I could not to presume so!"
"Well, I don't see 's it's sech drefful presumption. Ef you're poor, she's a woman, and real lonesome too; she ha'n't got nuther chick nor child belongin' to her, and you're the only man she ever took any kind of a notion to. I guess 't would be jest as much for her good as yourn."
"Hush, good Is-ray-el! it is good to stop there. She would not to marry after such years of goodness: she is a saint of the blessed."
"Well, I guess saints sometimes fellerships with sinners; I've heerd tell they did; and ef I was you, I'd make trial for 't. Nothin' ventur', nothin' have."
Whereupon Israel walked off, whistling.
Monsieur Leclerc's soul was perturbed within him by these suggestions; he pulled up two young cauliflowers and reset their places with pigweeds; he hoed the nicely sloped border of the bed flat to the path, and then flung the hoe across the walk, and went off to his daily occupation with a new idea in his head. Nor was it an unpleasant one. The idea of a transition from his squalid and pinching boarding-house to the delicate comfort of Miss Lucinda's ménage, the prospect of so kind and good a wife to care for his hitherto dreaded future,all this was pleasant. I cannot honestly say he was in love with our friend; I must even confess that whatever element of that nature existed between the two was now all on Miss Lucinda's side, little as she knew it. Certain it is, that, when she appeared that day at the dancing-class in a new green calico flowered with purple, and bows on her slippers big enough for a bonnet, it occurred to Monsieur Leclerc, that, if they were married, she would take no more lessons! However, let us not blame him; he was a man, and a poor one; one must not expect too much from men, or from poverty; if they are tolerably good, let us canonize them even, it is so hard for the poor creatures! And to do Monsieur Leclerc justice, he had a very thorough respect and admiration for Miss Lucinda. Years ago, in his stormy youth-time, there had been a pair of soft-fringed eyes that looked into his as none would ever look again,and they murdered her, those mad wild beasts of Paris, in the chapel where she knelt at her pure prayers,murdered her because she knelt beside an aristocrat, her best friend, the Duchess of Montmorenci, who had taken the pretty peasant from her own estate to bring her up for her maid. Jean Leclerc had lifted that pale shape from the pavement and buried it himself; what else he buried with it was invisible; but now he recalled the hour with a long, shuddering sigh, and, hiding his face in his hands, said softly, "The violet is dead,there is no spring for her. I will have now an amaranth,it is good for the tomb."
Whether Miss Lucinda's winter dress suggested this floral metaphor let us not inquire. Sacred be sentiment,when there is even a shadow of reality about it!when it becomes a profession, and confounds itself with millinery and shades of mourning, it is"bosh," as the Turkeys say.
So that very evening Monsieur Leclerc arrayed himself in his best, to give another lesson to Miss Lucinda. But, somehow or other, the lesson was long in beginning; the little parlor looked so home-like and so pleasant, with its bright lamp and gay bunch of roses on the table, that it was irresistible temptation to lounge and linger. Miss Lucinda had the volume of Florian in her hands, and was wondering why he did not begin, when the book was drawn away, and a hand laid on both of hers.
"Lucinda!" he began, "I give you no lesson to-night. I have to ask. Dear Mees, will you to marry your poor slave?"
"Oh, dear!" said Miss Lucinda.
Don't laugh at her, Miss Tender-eyes! You will feel just so yourself some day, when Alexander Augustus says, "Will you be mine, loveliest of jour sex?" only you won't feel it half so strongly, for you are young, and love is Nature to youth, but it is a heavenly surprise to age.
Monsieur Leclerc said nothing. He had a heart after all, and it was touched now by the deep emotion that flushed Miss Lucinda's face, and made her tremble so violently,but presently he spoke.
"Do not!" said he. "I am wrong. I presume. Forgive the stranger!"
"Oh, dear!" said poor Lucinda again,"oh, you know it isn't that! but how can you like me?"
There, Mademoiselle! there's humility for you! you will never say that to Alexander Augustus!
Monsieur Leclerc said nothing. He had a heart after all, and it was touched now by the deep emotion that flushed Miss Lucinda's face, and made her tremble so violently,but presently he spoke.
"Do not!" said he. "I am wrong. I presume. Forgive the stranger!"
"Oh, dear!" said poor Lucinda again,"oh, you know it isn't that! but how can you like me?"
There, Mademoiselle! there's humility for you! you will never say that to Alexander Augustus!
Monsieur Leclerc soothed this frightened, happy, incredulous little woman into quiet before very long; and if he really began to feel a true affection for her from the moment he perceived her humble and entire devotion to him, who shall blame him? Not I. If we were all heroes, who would be valet-de-chambre