III

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COUSINS

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      There was a large, discolored table in the armory, or gun-room, as they called it; and on this, without a cloth, our repast was spread by Cato, while the other servants retired, panting and grinning like over-fat hounds after a pack-run.

      And, by Heaven! they lacked nothing for solid silver, my cousins the Varicks, nor yet for fine glass, which I observed without appearance of vulgar curiosity while Cato carved a cold joint of butcher's roast and cracked the bottles of wine--a claret that perfumed the room like a garden in September.

      "Cousin Dorothy, I have the honor to raise my glass to you," I said.

      "I drink your health, Cousin George," she said, gravely--"Benny, let that wine alone! Is there no small-beer there, that you go coughing and staining your bib over wine forbidden? Take his glass away, Ruyven! Take it quick, I say!"

      Benny, deprived of his claret, collapsed moodily into a heap, and sat swinging his legs and clipping the table, at every kick of his shoon, until my wine danced in my glass and soiled the table.

      "Stop that, you!" cried Cecile.

      Benny subsided, scowling.

      Though Dorothy was at some pains to assure me that they had dined but an hour before, that did not appear to blunt their appetites. And the manner in which they drank astonished me, a glass of wine being considered sufficient for young ladies at home, and a half-glass for lads like Harry and Sam. Yet when I emptied my glass Dorothy emptied hers, and the servants refilled hers when they refilled mine, till I grew anxious and watched to see that her face flushed not, but had my anxiety for my pains, as she changed not a pulse-beat for all the red wine she swallowed.

      And Lord! how busy were her little white teeth, while her pretty eyes roved about, watchful that order be kept at this gypsy repast. Cecile and Harry fell to struggling for a glass, which snapped and flew to flakes under their clutching fingers, drenching them with claret.

      "Silence!" cried Dorothy, rising, eyes ablaze. "Do you wish our cousin Ormond to take us for manner-less savages?"

      "Why not?" retorted Harry. "We are!"

      "Oh, Lud!" drawled Cecile, languidly fanning her flushed face, "I would I had drunk small-beer--Harry, if you kick me again I'll pinch!"

      "It's a shame," observed Ruyven, "that gentlemen of our age may not take a glass of wine together in comfort."

      "Your age!" laughed Dorothy. "Cousin Ormond is twenty-three, silly, and I'm eighteen--or close to it."

      "And I'm seventeen," retorted Ruyven.

      "Yet I throw you at wrestling," observed Dorothy, with a shrug.

      "Oh, your big feet! Who can move them?" he rejoined.

      "Big feet? Mine?" She bent, tore a satin shoe from her foot, and slapped it down on the table in challenge to all to equal it--a small, silver-buckled thing of Paddington's make, with a smart red heel and a slender body, slim as the crystal slipper of romance.

      There was no denying its shapeliness; presently she removed it, and, stooping, slowly drew it on her foot.

      "Is that the shoe Sir John drank your health from?" sneered Ruyven.

      A rich flush mounted to Dorothy's hair, and she caught at her wine-glass as though to throw it at her brother.

      "A married man, too," he laughed--"Sir John Johnson, the fat baronet of the Mohawks--"

      "Damn you, will you hold your silly tongue?" she cried, and rose to launch the glass, but I sprang to my feet, horrified and astounded, arm outstretched.

      "Ruyven," I said, sharply, "is it you who fling such a taunt to shame your own kin? If there is aught of impropriety in what this man Sir John has done, is it not our affair with him in place of a silly gibe at Dorothy?"

      "I ask pardon," stammered Ruyven; "had there been impropriety in what that fool, Sir John, did I should not have spoke, but have acted long since, Cousin Ormond."

      "I'm sure of it," I said, warmly. "Forgive me, Ruyven."

      "Oh, la!" said Dorothy, her lips twitching to a smile, "Ruyven only said it to plague me. I hate that baronet, and Ruyven knows it, and harps ever on a foolish drinking-bout where all fell to the table, even Walter Butler, and that slow adder Sir John among the first. And they do say," she added, with scorn, "that the baronet did find one of my old shoon and filled it to my health--damn him!--"

      "Dorothy!" I broke in, "who in Heaven's name taught you such shameful oaths?"

      "Oaths?" Her face burned scarlet. "Is it a shameful oath to say 'Damn him'?"

      "It is a common oath men use--not gentlewomen," I said.

      "Oh! I supposed it harmless. They all laugh when I say it--father and Guy Johnson and the rest; and they swear other oaths--words I would not say if I could--but I did not know there was harm in a good smart 'damn!'"

      She leaned back, one slender hand playing with the stem of her glass; and the flush faded from her face like an afterglow from a serene horizon.

      "I fear," she said, "you of the South wear a polish we lack."

      "Best mirror your faults in it while you have the chance," said Harry, promptly.

      "We lack polish--even Walter Butler and Guy Johnson sneer at us under father's nose," said Ruyven. "What the devil is it in us Varicks that set folk whispering and snickering and nudging one another? Am I parti-colored, like an Oneida at a scalp-dance? Does Harry wear bat's wings for ears? Are Dorothy's legs crooked, that they all stare?"

      "It's your red head," observed Cecile. "The good folk think to see the noon-sun setting in the wood--"

      "Oh, tally! you always say that," snapped Ruyven.

      Dorothy, leaning forward, looked at me with dreamy blue eyes that saw beyond me.

      "We are doubtless a little mad, … as they say," she mused. "Otherwise we seem to be like other folk. We have clothing befitting, when we choose to wear it; we were schooled in Albany; we are people of quality, like the other patroons; we lack nothing for servants or tenants--what ails them all, to nudge and stare and grin when we pass?"

      "Mr. Livingston says our deportment shocks all," murmured Cecile.

      "The Schuylers will have none of us," added Harry, plaintively--"and I admire them, too."

      "Oh, they all conduct shamefully when I go to school in Albany," burst out Sammy; "and I thrashed that puling young patroon, too, for he saw me and refused my salute. But I think he will render me my bow next time."

      "Do the quality not visit you here?" I asked Dorothy.

      "Visit us? No, cousin. Who is to receive them? Our mother is dead."

      Cecile said: "Once they did come, but Uncle Varick had that mistress of Sir John's to sup with them and they took offence."

      "Mrs. Van Cortlandt said she was a painted hussy--" began Harry.

      "The