So Felix Kennaston had his hour. Now Margaret
has gone into Selwoode, flame-faced and quite unconscious
that she is humming under her breath the words of
a certain inane old song:
“Oh, she sat for me a chair;
She has ringlets in her hair;
She’s a young thing and cannot leave
her mother”—
Only she sang it “father.” And afterward,
she suddenly frowned and stamped her foot, did Margaret.
“I hate him!” said she; but she
looked very guilty.
In the living-hall of Selwoode Miss Hugonin paused.
Undeniably there were the accounts of the Ladies’
League for the Edification of the Impecunious to be
put in order; her monthly report as treasurer was
due in a few days, and Margaret was in such matters
a careful, painstaking body, and not wholly dependent
upon her secretary; but she was entirely too much
out of temper to attend to that now.
It was really all Mr. Kennaston’s fault, she
assured a pricking conscience, as she went out on
the terrace before Selwoode. He had bothered
her dreadfully.
There she found Petheridge Jukesbury smoking placidly
in the effulgence of the moonlight; and the rotund,
pasty countenance he turned toward her was ludicrously
like the moon’s counterfeit in muddy water.
I am sorry to admit it, but Mr. Jukesbury had dined
somewhat injudiciously. You are not to stretch
the phrase; he was merely prepared to accord the universe
his approval, to pat Destiny upon the head, and his
thoughts ran clear enough, but with Aprilian counter-changes
of the jovial and the lachrymose.
“Ah, Miss Hugonin,” he greeted her, with
a genial smile, “I am indeed fortunate.
You find me deep in meditation, and also, I am sorry
to say, in the practise of a most pernicious habit.
You do not object? Ah, that is so like you.
You are always kind, Miss Hugonin. Your kindness,
which falls, if I may so express myself, as the gentle
rain from Heaven upon all deserving charitable institutions,
and daily comforts the destitute with good advice
and consoles the sorrowing with blankets, would now
induce you to tolerate an odour which I am sure is
personally distasteful to you.”
“But really I don’t mind,”
was Margaret’s protest.
“I cannot permit it,” Mr. Jukesbury insisted,
and waved a pudgy hand in the moonlight. “No,
really, I cannot permit it. We will throw it
away, if you please, and say no more about it,”
and his glance followed the glowing flight of his
cigar-end somewhat wistfully. “Your father’s
cigars are such as it is seldom my privilege to encounter;
but, then, my personal habits are not luxurious, nor
my private income precisely what my childish imaginings
had pictured it at this comparatively advanced period
of life. Ah, youth, youth!—as the poet
admirably says, Miss Hugonin, the thoughts of youth
are long, long thoughts, but its visions of existence
are rose-tinged and free from care, and its conception
of the responsibilities of manhood—such
as taxes and the water-rate—I may safely
characterise as extremely sketchy. But pray be
seated, Miss Hugonin,” Petheridge Jukesbury
blandly urged.
