The Minister's Charge eBook

XIX.

Lemuel had found out about the art-students from Berry.  He said they were no relation to each other, and had not even been acquainted before they met at the art-school; he had first met them at the St. Albans.  Miss Swan was from the western part of the State, and Miss Carver from down Plymouth way.  The latter took pupils, and sometimes gave lessons at their houses; she was, to Berry’s thinking, not half the genius and not half the duck that Miss Swan was, though she was a duck in her way too.  Miss Swan, as nearly as he could explain, was studying art for the fun of it, or the excitement, for she was well enough off; her father was a lawyer out there, and Berry believed that a rising son-in-law in his own profession would be just the thing for the old man’s declining years.  He said he should not be very particular about settling down to practice at once; if his wife wanted to go to Europe a while, and kind of tender foot it round for a year or two in the art-centres over there, he would let the old man run the business a little longer; sometimes it did an old man good.  There was no hurry; Berry’s own father was not excited about his going to work right away; he had the money to run Berry and a wife too, if it came to that; Miss Swan understood that.  He had not told her so in just so many words, but he had let her know that Alonzo W.

Berry, senior, was not borrowing money at two per cent. a month any more.  He said he did not care to make much of a blow about that part of it till he was ready to act, and he was not going to act till he had a dead-sure thing of it; he was having a very good time as it went along, and he guessed Miss Swan was too; no use to hurry a girl, when she was on the right track.

Berry invented these axioms apparently to put himself in heart; in the abstract he was already courageous enough.  He said that these Eastern girls were not used to having any sort of attention; that there was only about a tenth or fifteenth of a fellow to every girl, and that it tickled one of them to death to have a whole man around.  He was not meanly exultant at their destitution.  He said he just wished one of these pretty Boston girls—­nice, well dressed, cultured, and brought up to be snubbed and neglected by the tenths and fifteenths of men they had at home—­could be let loose in the West, and have a regular round-up of fellows.  Or, no, he would like to have about five thousand fellows from out there, that never expected a woman to look at them, unloaded in Boston, and see them open their eyes.  “Wouldn’t one of ’em get home alive, if kindness could kill ’em.  I never saw such a place!  I can’t get used to it!  It makes me tired. Any sort of fellow could get married in Boston!”