The Classic Humor MEGAPACK ®. Эдгар Аллан По
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it in front; still he was very grateful for it—grateful for the warm glow that began to pervade him the moment he had donned it. He put on his one sock and his shoes, his hat, collar, tie and cuffs to keep the dogs from getting them, and was quite comfortable when Aunt Matilda came bustling back with a bowl of steaming tea and a tray loaded with good things to eat.
She sat by admiring his appetite until he had finished, then she made him drink the boneset tea to the last drop. He talked admirably all through the “dinner,” and it was with a sigh of almost regret that she started away with the empty dishes. She came back presently.
“You will find our summer cottage up in that direction,” she pointed out. “We shall expect you to—to keep out of range during the day, but to report at the kitchen door at dusk, when you will be escorted to the road.”
“I shall follow your instructions to the letter,” he assured her, and she again slowly walked away. To save her, the man-hater could not think of another reasonable excuse for prolonging the interview. He was a most gentlemanly young man, and he had splendid eyes!
The male trespasser spent the next hour in hunting clothes and anathematizing dogs. His finds were confined strictly to rags and pairless arms and sleeves, and finally he gave up, with everything accounted for but worthless. Discovering a high, grassy plot near the creek, screened from the woods by a thick copse of hazel bushes, he lay down to think matters over and promptly fell asleep.
* * * *
Perhaps half an hour later he slowly opened his eyes with the feeling that he was being compelled to awaken, and found Adnah seated quietly beside him, keeping the mosquitoes away from him with a gracefully waved hazel branch.
“Just sleep right on,” she gently urged. “I often sleep for hours on hot afternoons in this very place.”
“How did you come here?” he demanded, sitting up, startled.
“I hunted you,” she confessed with a delighted little laugh. “I’m so glad you’re awake at last and don’t want to sleep any more. I felt just sure that your eyes were blue. And they are!”
Her delight at this fact was so obvious that he felt uneasy.
“You see, I listened outside the window while Aunt Mattie told Aunts Ann and Sarah all about you,” she confidingly went on. “Aunt Sarah and Aunt Ann were for telephoning for the sheriff anyhow, but Aunt Mattie wouldn’t let them. She likes you. So do I.”
“Oh!” said the astonished young man. For the first time in his life conversation had failed him.
“Of course,” said the girl simply. “Well, I waited until they all lay down for their after-dinner naps, and climbed out of my window so as not to disturb them. They do enjoy their naps so much, you know. I didn’t find you at the pool but I just hunted until I did find you. I’ve been sitting here a long time watching you. You look so nice when you are asleep.”
Now what should he say? With any ordinary girl he could have found the answer, but this one had him floored.
“But you look ever so much nicer when you are awake,” she further informed him, with a clear-eyed straightforwardness that was worse than disconcerting. In desperation he answered, with her own frankness, that she was nice looking herself. He meant it, too.
“I’m so glad you think so,” she contentedly sighed. “I just knew we should like each other as soon as I saw you lying there asleep.”
It was he who blushed, not the girl.
She partly raised up to recapture her hazel branch, and when she sat down again her shoulder remained lightly touching his arm. An electric thrill ran through him and tingled out at his fingertips, but he never moved a muscle. She looked up at him in peaceful happiness and he somehow felt very mean and unworthy. Her eyes made him uncomfortable. The whole trouble was that she was so honest—had never been taught to conceal her thoughts by the thousand and one spoken and unspoken lies of ordinary social intercourse. She was neither timid nor bold, but merely natural, with never a suspicion that conventionality demanded a man and a maid to leave a mutual liking unconfessed. It was rather rough on the young man. He was not used to having the truth fly around in such reckless fashion in his conversations with girls, and it bothered him.
“I’m not a bit afraid of you,” she presently told him. “I knew all the time that Aunt Mattie was wrong. She told me that all men were dreadful, and that the first thing they did was to—to kiss a girl they liked.”
“She knows nothing about it,” he replied rather crossly. For some unaccountable reason he was angry with himself and with her.
“Indeed, she doesn’t,” she agreed, eying him thoughtfully. Presently she added: “I do not believe, though, that I should have minded it so much if she had been right.”
Shade of Plato! He looked down at the tempting curve of her red lips. They were round and full and soft as the petals of a half-blown rosebud, warm and tender and sweet, with just the least trace of puckering to indicate how they could meet the pressure of other lips. He felt his heart come pounding up into the region of his Adam’s apple, and he trembled as he had not done since his first attack of puppy love at the age of fourteen. His breath came and went with a painful flutter but he made no movement. If it had been any sort of a girl under the sun, especially if so attractive as this one, she would have been kissed until she gasped for breath; but he just couldn’t do it. However, if she went so far as to ask him to kiss her, by George! he didn’t see how he was to get out of it!
“I should really like to kiss you,” he admitted with a martyr-like sigh and a further echo of her own frankness, “but I shan’t. Under the circumstances it would not be right.”
He reflected, grinning, that mother would be proud if she could see him now, then he thought, grinning harder, of the boys at the club. Ifthey only knew!
“There, didn’t I say so!” she triumphantly exclaimed. “I told Aunt Matilda that there certainly must be some good men in the world!”
Good! He winced as certain memories of his careless youth began to do cake-walks up and down his conscience. Then he changed the subject.
She snuggled up closely to him, by and by, confidingly and unsuspicious, and just talked and talked and talked. It was very pleasant to have her there at his side, babbling innocently away in that sweet, musical voice. How pretty she was, how artless and trusting, how honest and how heart-whole! It came to him that his family and friends had for a long time been telling him that he ought to get married, and he began to see that they were right.
How delightful it would be to stay on forever in this enchanted grove with her. He presently found himself fervently saying it, though he had not intended such words to pass his lips. She took the wish as a matter of course. She had confidently expected him to feel that way about it, and, if he felt that way, to say so.
“Adnah Eggleson!”
They jumped like juvenile jam-thieves caught red-handed.
Aunt Sarah and Aunt Ann and Aunt Matilda rigidly confronted them, having stolen upon them unseen, unheard, unthought of, and they stood now in grim horror, merciless and implacable. They advanced in a swooping body, after one moment of agonizing suspense, and snatched Adnah into their midst, glaring three kinds of loathing scorn upon the interloping serpent.
“Has this person kissed you, or attempted to do so?” hissed Aunt Sarah.
“Not yet,” meekly answered poor Adnah.
“I assure you ladies—,” began the serpent, but Aunt Sarah cut him short.
“Silence, sir!” she commanded. “We wish no explanations from you, whatsoever.”
Thus crushing him, the little company wheeled and marched away, bearing Adnah an unwilling and impenitent captive, two of them ingeniously keeping behind her so that she should have no opportunity of even exchanging a backward glance with the serpent.
Left to himself the serpent moodily kicked holes