by Bret Harte
out--I'm alwaystiring people out--and she's gone back to the house to write letters.Sit down, Mr. Jeff, do, please!"
Jeff, feeling uncomfortably large in Miss Mayfield's presence, painfullyseated himself on the edge of a very low stone, which had the effectof bringing his knees up on a level with his chin, and affected an easeglaringly simulated.
"Or lie down, there, Mr. Jeff--it is so comfortable."
Jeff, with a dreadful conviction that he was crashing down like afalling pine-tree, managed at last to acquire a recumbent position at arespectful distance from the little figure.
"There, isn't it nice?"
"Yes, Miss Mayfield."
"But, perhaps," said Miss Mayfield, now that she had him down, "perhapsyou too have got something to do. Dear me! I'm like that naughty boy inthe story-book, who went round to all the animals, in turn, asking themto play with him. He could only find the butterfly who had nothing todo. I don't wonder he was disgusted. I hate butterflies."
Love clarifies the intellect! Jeff, astonished at himself, burst out,"Why, look yer, Miss Mayfield, the butterfly only hez a day or twoto--to--to live and--be happy!"
Miss Mayfield crossed her knees again, and instantly, after the sublimefashion of her sex, scattered his intellect by a swift transition fromthe abstract to the concrete. "But you're not a butterfly, Mr. Jeff.You're always doing something. You've been hunting."
"No-o!" said Jeff, scarlet, as he thought of his gun in pawn at the"Summit."
"But you do hunt; I know it."
"How?"
"You shot those quail for me the morning after I came. I heard you goout--early--very early."
"Why, you allowed you slept so well that night, Miss Mayfield."
"Yes; but there's a kind of delicious half-sleep that sick people havesometimes, when they know and are gratefully conscious that other peopleare doing things for them, and it makes them rest all the sweeter."
There was a dead silence. Jeff, thrilling all over, dared not sayanything to dispel his delicious dream. Miss Mayfield, alarmed at hisreadiness with the butterfly illustration, stopped short. They bothlooked at the prospect, at the distant "Summit Hotel"--a mere snow-drifton the mountain--at the clear sunlight on the barren plateau, at thebleak, uncompromising "Half-way House," and said nothing.
"I ought to be very grateful," at last began Miss Mayfield, in quiteanother voice, and a suggestion that she was now approaching real andprofitable conversation, "that I'm so much better. This mountain air hasbeen like balm to me. I feel I am growing stronger day by day. I do notwonder that you are so healthy and so strong as you are, Mr. Jeff."
Jeff, who really did not know before that he was so healthy,apologetically admitted the fact. At the same time, he was miserablyconscious that Miss Mayfield's condition, despite her ill health, wasvery superior to his own.
"A month ago," she continued reflectively, "my mother would never havethought it possible to leave me here alone. Perhaps she may be gettingworried now."
Miss Mayfield had calculated over much on Jeff's recumbent position. Toher surprise and slight mortification, he rose instantly to his feet,and said anxiously,
"Ef you think so, miss, p'raps I'm keeping you here."
"Not at all, Mr. Jeff. Your being here is a sufficient excuse for mystaying," she replied, with the large dignity of a small body.
Jeff, mentally and physically crushed again, came down a little heavierthan before, and reclined humbly at her feet. Second knock-down blow forMiss Mayfield.
"Come, Mr. Jeff," said the triumphant goddess, in her first voice, "tellme something about yourself. How do you live here--I mean; what do youdo? You ride, of course--and very well too, I can tell you! But youknow that. And of course that scarf and the silver spurs and the wholedashing equipage are not intended entirely for yourself. No! Some youngwoman is made happy by that exhibition, of course. Well, then, there'sthe riding down to see her, and perhaps the riding out with her,and--what else?"
"Miss Mayfield," said Jeff, suddenly rising above his elbow and hisgrammar, "thar isn't no young woman! Thar isn't another soul exceptyourself that I've laid eyes on, or cared to see since I've been yer. Efmy aunt hez been telling ye that--she's--she--she--she--she--lies."
Absolute, undiluted truth, even of a complimentary nature, isconfounding to most women. Miss Mayfield was no exception to her sex.She first laughed, as she felt she ought to, and properly might with anyother man than Jeff; then she got frightened, and said hurriedly, "No,no! you misunderstand me. Your aunt has said nothing." And then shestopped with a pink spot on her cheek-bones. First blood for Jeff!
Now this would never do; it was worse than the butterflies! She rose toher full height--four feet eleven and a half--and drew her cloak overher shoulders. "I think I will return to the house," she said quietly;"I suppose I ought not to overtask my strength."
"You'd better let me go with you, miss," said Jeff submissively.
"I will, on one condition," she said, recovering her archness, with alittle venom in it, I fear. "You were going home, too, when I called toyou. Now, I do not intend to let you leave that bag behind that tree,and then have to come back for it, just because you feel obliged togo with me. Bring it with you on one arm, and I'll take the other, orelse--I'll go alone. Don't be alarmed," she added softly; "I'm strongerthan I was the first night I came, when you carried me and all myworldly goods besides."
She turned upon him her subtle magnetic eyes, and looked at him as shehad the first night they met. Jeff turned away bewildered, but presentlyappeared again with the bag on his shoulder, and her wrap on his arm.As she slipped her little hand over his sleeve, he began, apologeticallyand nervously,
"When I said that about Aunt Sally, miss, I"--
The hand immediately became limp, the grasp conventional.
"I was mad, miss," Jeff blundered on, "and I don't see how you believedit--knowing everything ez you do."
"How knowing everything as I do?" asked Miss Mayfield coldly.
"Why, about the quail, and about the bag!"
"Oh," said Miss Mayfield.
Five minutes later, Yuba Bill nearly ditched his coach in his utteramazement at an apparently simple spectacle--a tall, good-looking youngfellow, in a red shirt and high boots, carrying a bag on his back, andbeside him, hanging confidentially on his arm, a small, slight, prettygirl in a red cloak. "Nothing mean about her, eh, Bill?" said asadmiring box-passenger. "Young couple, I reckon, just out from theStates."
"No!" roared Bill.
"Oh, well, his sweetheart, I reckon?" suggested the box-passenger.
"Nary time!" growled Bill. "Look yer! I know 'em both, and they knowsme. Did ye notiss she never drops his arm when she sees the stagecomin', but kinder trapes along jist the same? Had they been courtin',she'd hev dropped his arm like pizen, and walked on t'other side theroad."
Nevertheless, for some occult reason, Bill was evidently out of humor;and for the next few miles exhorted the impenitent Blue Grass horse withconsiderable fervor.
Meanwhile this pair, outwardly the picture of pastoral conjugality,slowly descended the hill. In that brief time, failing to get at anyfurther facts regarding Jeff's life, or perhaps reading the story quiteplainly, Miss Mayfield had twittered prettily about herself. She paintedher tropic life in the Sandwich Islands--her delicious "laziness," asshe called it; "for, you know," she added, "although I had the excuse ofbeing an invalid, and of living in the laziest climate in the world, andof having money, I think, Mr. Jeff, that I'm naturally lazy. Perhaps ifI lived here long enough, and got well again, I might do something, butI don't think I could ever be like your aunt. And there she is now,Mr. Jeff, making signs for you to hasten. No, don't mind me, but run onahead; else I shall have her blaming me for demoralizing you too. Go; Iinsist upon it! I can walk the rest of the way alone. Will you go? Youwon't? Then I shall stop here and not stir another step forward untilyou do."
She stopped, half jestingly, half earnestly, in the middle of the road,and emphasized her determination with a
nod of her head--an action that,however, shook her hat first rakishly over one eye, and then on theground. At which Jeff laughed, picked it up, presented it to her, andthen ran off to the house.
III.
His aunt met him angrily on the porch. "Thar ye are at last, and yer's astranger waitin to see you. He's been axin all sorts o' questions, aboutthe house and the business, and kinder snoopin' round permiskiss.I don't like his looks, Jeff, but thet's no reason why ye should begallivantin' round in business
