Miranda. Grace Livingston Hill
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his baby or something. He's seen how well you cared for Rose, and his baby isn't well. I heard to-day that his sister has to go home next week. Her laughter is going away to teach school this fall."
"Well, I ain't a reg'lar servant, I'll tell him that," said Miranda with a toss of her head, "an' ef I was, I wouldn't work fer him. He's got a pack of the meanest young ones ever walked this earth. They ought to be spanked, every one o' them. I’ll just go down an' let him know he's wasting his time comin' after me. Say, Mrs. Marcia, you don't want me to go, do you? You ain' tired of me, be you? 'Cause I kin go away, back to Gran'ma's ef you be, but I won't be shunted off onto Nathan Whitney."
Marcia assured her that it was the one dread of her life that Miranda would leave her and comforted, the girl descended to the parlor.
Nathan Whitney, tall, pale, thin, blue-eyed, scant-straw-colored of hair and eyebrow, angular of lip and cheek bone, unemotional of manner, came to his point at once in a tone so cold that it seemed to be a part of the November night sighing round the house.
Miranda, her freckled face gone white with excitement, her piquant, tip-tilted nose alert, her blue eyes under their red lashes keen as steel blades, and even her red hair waving back rampantly, sat and listened with growing animosity. She was like an angry lioness guarding her young, expecting momentarily to be torn away, yet intending to rend the hunter before he could accomplish his intention. Her love in this case was the little sleeping Rose upstairs in the cradle. Miranda did not tell him so, but she hated him for even suggesting anything that would separate her from that beloved baby. That this attempt came in the form of an offer of marriage did not blind her eyes to the real facts in the case. Therefore she listened coldly, drawing herself up with a new dignity as the brief and chilly declaration drew to its close, and her eyes flashed sparks at the calmly confident suitor.
Suddenly, before her gaze, had come the vision of his second wife not dead a year, brown eyes with golden glints and twinkles in them, but filled with sadness as if the life in them were slowly being crushed out; thin cheeks with a dash of crimson in their whiteness that looked as if at one time they might have dimpled in charming curves, lips all drooping that had yet a hint of cupid's bow in their bending. Her oldest boy with all his mischief looked like her, only he was bold and wicked in place of her sadness and submission. Miranda bursting with romance herself, had always felt for the ghost of young Mrs. Whitney's beauty, and wondered how such a girl came to be tied as second wife to a dried-up creature like Nathan Whitney. Therefore, Miranda held him with her eye until his well-prepared speech was done. Then she asked dryly:
"Mr. Whitney, did Mis' Whitney know you wuz cal'clatin' to git married right away agin fer a third time?”
A flush slowly rose from Nathan Whitney's stubbly upper lip and mounted to his high bare forehead, where it mingled into his scant straw-colored locks. His hands, which were thin and bony and showed the big veins like cords to tie the bones together, worked nervously on his knees.
"Just why should you ask that, Miss Griscom?” he demanded, his cold voice a trifle shaken.
"Wal, I thought 't might be," said Miranda nonchalantly, "I couldn't see no other reason why you should come fer me, ner why you should come so soon. 'Tain't skurcely decent, 'nless she 'ranged matters, made you promus. I've heard o' wives doin' thet frum jealousy, bein' so fond o' their lovin' husband thet they couldn't bear to hev him selec’ ’nuther. I thought she might a-picked me out ez bein' the onlikeliest she knowed to be fell in love with. Folks don't gen'lly pick out red hair an' freckles when they want to fall in love. I never knowed your fust wife but you showed sech good taste pickin' out the second, Mr. Whitney, couldn't ever think you didn't know I was homebley, n'less your eyesight's begun failin."
Nathan Whitney had flushed and paled angrily during this speech, but maintained his cold self-control.
"Miss Griscom, we will not discuss my wife. She was as she was, and she is now departed. Time goes slowly with the bereaved heart, and I have been driven to look around for a mother to my children. If it seems sudden to you, remember that I have a family to consider and must put my own feelings aside. Suffice it to say that I have been looking about for some time and I have noticed your devotion to the child your care in this household. I felt you would be thoroughly trustworthy to put in charge of my motherless children, and have therefore come to put the matter before you."
"Wal, you kin gather it right up agin and take home with you," said Miranda with a toss. "I wasn’t thinkin' of takin' no famblies to raise. I'm a free an' independent young woman who can earn her own livin', an' when I want to take a fambly to raise I'll go to the poor farm an' selec' one fer myself. At present I'm perfickly confort'ble a livin' with people 'at wants me fer myself. I don't hev to git married to some one thet would allus be thinkin' uv my red hair an' freckles, and my father that ran away——”
"Miss Griscom," said Nathan Whitney severely, "I thoroughly respect you, else I should not have made you the offer of my hand in marriage. You are certainly not responsible for the sins your father has committed, and as for your personal appearance, a meek and quiet spirit is often a better adorning——”
But Miranda's spirit could bear no more.
"Well, I guess you needn't go on any farther, Mr. Whitney. I ain't considerin' any sech offers at present, so I guess that ends it. Do you want I should git your ombrell? It's a rainy evenin', ain't it? That your coat? Want I should hep you on with it? Good even'n', Mr. Whitney. Mind thet bottom step, it gits slipp'ry now an' agin."
Miranda closed and bolted the front door hard, and stood with her back leaning against it in a relaxation of relief. Then suddenly she broke into clear merry laughter, and laughed so hard that Marcia came to the library door to see what was the matter.
"Golly! Mrs. Marcia, wha' d'ye think? I got a perposal. Me, with my red hair’n all, I got a perposal! I never 'spected it in the world, but I got it. Golly, ain't it funny?"
“Miranda!" said Marcia coming out into the hall and standing in dismayed amazement to watch her serving maid. "Miranda, what in the world do you mean?”
"Jest what I say," said Miranda. "He wanted to marry me so's I could look after his childern," and she bent double in another convulsion of laughter.
"He wanted you to marry him? And what did you tell him?" asked Marcia, scarcely knowing what to think as she eyed the strange girl in her mirth.
"I told him I had a job I liked better, 'r words to that effect," said Miranda suddenly sobering and wiping her eyes with her white apron. "Mrs. Marcia, you don't think I'd marry that slab-sided tombstun of a man ennyhow he'd fix it, do you? An' you ain't a-supposin' I'd leave you to tend that blessed baby upstairs all alone. Not while I got my senses, Mrs. Marcia. You jest go back in there to your readin' with Mr. David, an' I'll go set the buckwheats fer breakfast. But, Golly! Ain't it funny? Nathan Whitney perposin' to me! I'll be swithered!" and she vanished into the kitchen laughing.
It was the next morning, when she opened the shutters to the new fresh day with its bright cold air and business-like attitude of having begun the winter, that Miranda began those brief matinal surveys of the house across the way, taking it all in, from the gable ends with their little oriole windows, to the dreary flags that paved the way to the steps with the lofty pillared porch suggestive of aristocracy. It was an immense satisfaction to Miranda's red-haired, freckled-faced soul, to reflect that she might have been mistress of that mansion. It was not like thinking all her life that nobody wanted her, nobody would have her, and she could never be married because she would never be asked. She had been asked. She had had her chance and refused, and her bosom swelled with pride. She was here because she wanted to be here on this side of the street, but she might have been there in that other house if she had chosen. She might have been step-mother to that little horde of scared straw-colored girls, and naughty handsome boys who scuffled out of the gate now and then with fearful backward glances toward the house as if they were afraid of their lives, and never by any chance meant to do what they ought to if they could help it. The girls all looked like their drab-and-straw-colored father, but the boys were handsome little fellows with eyes like their mother and a hunted look about their faces. Miranda in her reflections always called them brats!