The Lady of the Aroostook Part 9

"That was my munificent intention. I want to write your name in it.

What's the initial of your first name, Miss Blood?"

"L, thank you," said Lydia.

Staniford gave a start. "No!" he exclaimed. It seemed a fatality.

"My name is Lydia," persisted the girl. "What letter should it begin with?"

"Oh--oh, I knew Lydia began with an L," stammered Staniford, "but I--I--I thought your first name was--"

"What?" asked Lydia sharply.

"I don't know. Lily," he answered guiltily.

"Lily _Blood_!" cried the girl. "Lydia is bad enough; but _Lily_ Blood!

They couldn't have been such fools!"

"I beg your pardon. Of course not. I don't know how I could have got the idea. It was one of those impressions--hallucinations--" Staniford found himself in an att.i.tude of lying excuse towards the simple girl, over whom he had been lording it in satirical fancy ever since he had seen her, and meekly anxious that she should not be vexed with him. He began to laugh at his predicament, and she smiled at his mistake. "What is the date?" he asked.

"The 15th," she said; and he wrote under the sketch, _Lydia Blood. s.h.i.+p Aroostook, August_ 15, 1874, and handed it to her, with a bow surcharged with gravity.

She took it, and regarded the picture without comment.

"Ah!" said Staniford, "I see that you know how bad my sketch is. You sketch."

"No, I don't know how to draw," replied Lydia.

"You criticise."

"No."

"So glad," said Staniford. He began to like this. A young man must find pleasure in sitting alone near a pretty young girl, and talking with her about herself and himself, no matter how plain and dull her speech is; and Staniford, though he found Lydia as blankly unresponsive as might be to the flattering irony of his habit, amused himself in realizing that here suddenly he was almost upon the terms of window-seat flirtation with a girl whom lately he had treated with perfect indifference, and just now with fatherly patronage. The situation had something more even than the usual window-seat advantages; it had qualities as of a common s.h.i.+pwreck, of their being cast away on a desolate island together. He felt more than ever that he must protect this helpless loveliness, since it had begun to please his imagination. "You don't criticise," he said.

"Is that because you are so amiable? I'm sure you could, if you would."

"No," returned Lydia; "I don't really know. But I've often wished I did know."

"Then you didn't teach drawing, in your school?"

"How did you know I had a school?" asked Lydia quickly.

He disliked to confess his authority, because he disliked the authority, but he said, "Mr. Hicks told us."

"Mr. Hicks!" Lydia gave a little frown as of instinctive displeasure, which gratified Staniford.

"Yes; the cabin-boy told him. You see, we are dreadful gossips on the Aroostook,--though there are so few ladies--" It had slipped from him, but it seemed to have no personal slant for Lydia.

"Oh, yes; I told Thomas," she said. "No; it's only a country school.

Once I thought I should go down to the State Normal School, and study drawing there; but I never did. Are you--are you a painter, Mr.

Staniford?"

He could not recollect that she had p.r.o.nounced his name before; he thought it came very winningly from her lips. "No, I'm not a painter.

I'm not anything." He hesitated; then he added recklessly, "I'm a farmer."

"A farmer?" Lydia looked incredulous, but grave.

"Yes; I'm a h.o.r.n.y-handed son of the soil. I'm a cattle-farmer; I'm a sheep-farmer; I don't know which. One day I'm the one, and the next day I'm the other." Lydia looked mystified, and Staniford continued: "I mean that I have no profession, and that sometimes I think of going into farming, out West."

"Yes?" said Lydia.

"How should I like it? Give me an opinion, Miss Blood."

"Oh, I don't know," answered the girl.

"You would never have dreamt that I was a farmer, would you?"

"No, I shouldn't," said Lydia, honestly. "It's very hard work."

"And I don't look fond of hard work?"

"I didn't say that."

"And I've no right to press you for your meaning."

"What I meant was--I mean--Perhaps if you had never tried it you didn't know what very hard work it was. Some of the summer boarders used to think our farmers had easy times."

"I never was a summer boarder of that description. I know that farming is hard work, and I'm going into it because I dislike it. What do you think of that as a form of self-sacrifice?"

"I don't see why any one should sacrifice himself uselessly."

"You don't? You have very little conception of martyrdom. Do you like teaching school?"

"No," said Lydia promptly.

"Why do you teach, then?" Staniford had blundered. He knew why she taught, and he felt instantly that he had hurt her pride, more sensitive than that of a more sophisticated person, who would have had no scruple in saying that she did it because she was poor. He tried to retrieve himself. "Of course, I understand that school-teaching is useful self-sacrifice." He trembled lest she should invent some pretext for leaving him; he could not afford to be left at a disadvantage. "But do you know, I would no more have taken you for a teacher than you me for a farmer."

"Yes?" said Lydia.

He could not tell whether she was appeased or not, and he rather feared not. "You don't ask why. And I asked you why at once."

Lydia laughed. "Well, why?"

"Oh, that's a secret. I'll tell you one of these days." He had really no reason; he said this to gain time. He was always honest in his talk with men, but not always with women.

"I suppose I look very young," said Lydia. "I used to be afraid of the big boys."

"If the boys were big enough," interposed Staniford, "they must have been afraid of you."

Lydia said, as if she had not understood, "I had hard work to get my certificate. But I was older than I looked."