She and I Volume I Part 20

However, the dear old lady did not leave me long in doubt.

She was never in the habit of "beating about the bush;" but always spoke out straight, plump and plain, to the point.

"Really, my boy," she continued, "I think there is no excuse for your acting so strangely to the poor little girl, after all your attentions and long intimacy!"

"But, Miss Pimpernell," I commenced; however, she quickly interrupted me.

"'But me no buts,' Frank Lorton," she said, with more determination and severity than she had ever used to me since I had known her. "I'm quite angry with you. You have disappointed all my expectations, when I thought I knew your character so well, too! Learn, that there is no one I despise so much as a male flirt. Oh, Frank! I did not think you had a grain of such little-mindedness in you! I believed you to be straightforward, and earnest, and true. I'm sadly disappointed in you, my boy; sadly disappointed!" and she shook her head reproachfully.

It was very hard being attacked in this way, when I had come for consolation!

I had thought myself to be the injured party, whose wounds would have been bound up, and oil and wine inpoured by the good Samaritan to whom I had always looked as my staunchest ally; yet, here she was, upbraiding me as a heartless deceiver, a role which I had never played in my life!

I did not know what to make of it.

What was she driving at?

"I a.s.sure you, Miss Pimpernell," I said with all the earnestness which the circ.u.mstances really warranted, "that I have not behaved in any way, to my knowledge, of which you might be ashamed for my sake. I came in this evening to ask your sympathy; and, here, you accuse me like this, without waiting to hear a word I have to say! Miss Pimpernell, you are unjust to me. I will go."

And I made as if to leave the room in a huff.

"Stop, Frank," said the dear little old lady, rising to her feet, and speaking to me again with something of her old cordial manner--"You speak candidly; and I've always known you to tell the truth, so I won't doubt you now. Perhaps things have only got into a muddle after all.

Let me see if I cannot get to the bottom of it, and set them straight for you! You will not deny, I suppose, Frank, that up to a short time since you've been in the habit of paying a good deal of attention to Minnie Clyde?"

"Miss Clyde is nothing to me now!" I said grandly: I did not deceive her, however, nor turn her from her purpose.

"Wait a minute, my boy, and hear me out. You won't deny that you have been what you call 'spoony,' in your abominable slang, eh, Frank?" she repeated, with a knowing glance from her beady black eyes.

"Pay her attention, Miss Pimpernell," I said impetuously. "Good heavens! Why, at one time I would have died for her, and let my body be cut into little pieces, if it would only have done her any good!"

"Softly, Frank," responded the old lady. "I don't think that _would_ have done her any good, or you either, for that matter! But, why have you changed towards her, Frank? I never thought you so false and fickle, my boy. She came in here to see me to-day, looking very excited and unhappy; and when she had sat down--there, in that very chair you are now sitting in," continued Miss Pimpernell, emphasising her words by pointing to the corner I occupied, "and I asked her soothingly what distressed her, she burst into tears, and sobbed as if her little heart would break. I declare, my boy," said the warm-hearted little body, with a husky cough, "I almost cried myself in company. However, I got it all out of her afterwards. It seems to me, Frank, that you have behaved very unkindly to her. She thought she had offended you in some way of which she declared that she was perfectly ignorant: she had asked you, she said, but you would not tell her--treating her as if she were a perfect stranger. She's a sensitive girl, Frank, and you have hurt her feelings to the quick! Now, what is the reason of this--do you care for her still?"

"Care for her! Miss Pimpernell," I said. "Why I love her--although I did not intend telling you yet."

"As if I didn't know all about that already," said the old lady, laughing cheerily. "Oh, you lovers, you lovers! You are just for all the world like a herd of wild ostriches, that stick their heads in the bush, and fancy that they are completely concealed from observation!

All of you imagine, that, because you do not take people into your confidence, they are as blind as you are! Can't they see all that is going on well enough; don't your very looks, much less your actions, betray you? Why, Frank, I knew all about your case weeks ago, my boy!-- without any information from you or anybody else! Besides, you know, I _ought_ to have some _little_ experience in such matters by this time; for, every boy and girl in the parish has made me their confidante for years and years past!" and she laughed again.

Miss Pimpernell was once more her cheery old self, quite restored to her normal condition of good humour.

No one, I believe, ever saw her "put out" for more than five minutes consecutively at the outside; and very seldom for so long, at that.

"Ah!" I e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed with a deep sigh, "I wish I had told you before.

Now, it is too late!"

"Too late!" she rejoined, briskly. "Too late! Nonsense; it's 'never too late to mend.'"

"It is in some cases," I said, as mournfully as Lady Dasher could have spoken; "and this is one of them!"

It was all over, I thought, so, why talk about it any more? What was done couldn't be helped!

"Rubbis.h.!.+" replied Miss Pimpernell; "you've had a tiff with her, and think you have parted for ever! You see, I know all about it without your telling me. You lovers are ever quarrelling and making up again; though, how you manage it, I can't think. But, Frank, there must always be two to make a quarrel, and Minnie Clyde does not seem to have been one to yours. Tell me why you have altered so towards her; and, let us see whether old Sally cannot mend matters for you."

She looked at me so kindly that I made a clean breast of all my troubles.

"Well, Frank!" she exclaimed, when I had got to the end of my story, "you are a big stupid, in spite of all your cleverness! You are not a bit sharper than the rest of your s.e.x:--a woman has twice the insight of any of you lords of creation! Did I not tell you, not to believe that absurd story about Mr Mawley long ago--that it was only a silly tale of Shuffler's, and not worth a moment's credence? But, you wouldn't believe me; and, here you have been knocking your head against a wall just on account of that c.o.c.k-and-a-bull-story, and nothing else! Ah, you lovers will never learn common sense! If it wasn't for us old ladies, you would get into such fine sc.r.a.pes that you would never get out of them, I can tell you!"

"And you are sure it is not true, Miss Pimpernell?" I asked, imploringly.

"Certainly, Frank. Where are your eyes? You are as blind as a mole, my boy."

"O, Miss Pimpernell!" I exclaimed, in remorse at my hasty conduct, "what shall I do to make my peace once more with her? She will never speak to me again, I know, unless you intercede for me, and tell her how the misunderstanding arose."

"You have been very foolish, Frank," said my kind old friend; "but I will try what I can do for you. You ought to have known that she did not care for Mr Mawley--not in the way you mean; and, as for marrying him, why, the curate himself does not dream of such a thing. I cannot imagine how you could have been so blind!"

"But you _will_ help me, Miss Pimpernell, won't you?" I entreated.

"Well, my boy, I will tell Minnie what you have just told me about your delusion, and say that you are very sorry for having treated her so badly."

"And tell her," I interposed, "that she's dearer to me than ever."

"I will do nothing of the sort," hastily replied the old lady. "I am not going to give Miss Spight another chance of calling me 'a wretched old match-maker,' as she did once! No, Master Frank, you must do all your love-making yourself, my boy. I did not tell you that Minnie cares for you, you know; and, I can't say whether she does, or no. She's only very unhappy at your considering her no longer in the light of a friend, and has said nothing to lead me to imagine anything more than that. She would not have spoken to me at all about it, I'm confident, if she had not happened to have seen you only a moment before, and had her sensitive little heart wounded by your coldness! Why don't you tell her yourself, Frank, what you wish me to say for you?"

"So I would, Miss Pimpernell, at once," I replied, "if I only had an opportunity; but I never get a chance of seeing her alone."

"Why don't you make one, Frank?" said she. "For a young fellow of the day, you are wonderfully bashful and shy, not to be able to tell the girl of your heart that you love her! I declare, if I had only done what they wanted me, I would have proposed for half of the wives of the present married men of my acquaintance! When I was a girl, gentlemen seemed to have twice the ardour about them that they have now! You are all, now-a-days, like a pack of boarding-school misses, and have to be as tenderly coaxed on into proposing, as if _you_ were the wooed and not the wooers. You don't understand what ladies like," continued the old lady, who, like most elderly maidens, had a strong spice of the romantic in her composition; "they prefer having their affections taken by a.s.sault instead of all this s.h.i.+lly-shallying and faint-heartedness. If I had had my choice, when I thought, as girls will think, of such things, I would have liked my lover to carry me off like those gallant knights did in the good old days that we read of!"

"And had him prosecuted for abduction," said I, laughing at her enthusiasm.

"Well, well, Frank," she said, laughing too, "I don't mean to advise you to go to that extent; yet, you might easily find an opportunity to speak to Minnie Clyde, if you only set your wits to work. There's the school treat on Thursday, won't that do for you?"

"Really," I replied, "I never thought of that, Miss Pimpernell; indeed I had made up my mind not to go; and--"

"Why shouldn't you?" said the energetic little old lady, interrupting me. "What better chance could you have, I should like to know--a nice long day in the country, a picnic excursion, a pleasant party, with lots of openings for private conversation? Dear me, Frank, you are not half a lover! If I were a handsome young fellow like you, I would soon cut you out, my boy! Only be bold and speak out to her. Girls like boldness. I wouldn't have given twopence for a bashful man when I was young."

"So I will, Miss Pimpernell," said I, carried away by her energy and enthusiasm; "I will go to the school treat--that is, if you will only kindly see _Miss Clyde_ for me"--I was rather diffident of letting Miss Pimpernell know of the friendly footing we had been on, regarding Christian nomenclature--"beforehand, and get her to forgive me. You will, won't you, dear Miss Pimpernell?"

"None of your soft-sawder, Master Frank," replied the old lady; "I will do what I can to make your peace, as I promised; but, as to anything further, you must be a man, and speak up for yourself."

"I will, you may rely," I said, determined to bring matters to an issue ere the week should close.

Before Thursday came, however, I knew that Miss Pimpernell had kept her word in interceding for me, and that Min had quite forgiven me.

She was "friends with me once more," I was a.s.sured; for, when I pa.s.sed her window the next evening, in fear and trembling lest she should still be hostile and not recognise me, she bowed and smiled to me in her own old sweet way, as she used to do before my fit of jealousy and our consequent estrangement.

Oh! how ardently I looked forwards to the approaching school treat. I was then resolved to learn whether she loved me or no. "Faint heart never won fair lady," as Miss Pimpernell had told me; I would deserve her reproach no longer.

Thursday arrived at length, and with it the school treat.

This summer "outing" had been an inst.i.tution of annual celebration by our vicar long before it became a habit of London clergymen to send columns of appeals to the benevolent in the daily papers to a.s.sist the poor children of their respective congregations towards having "a day's pleasuring in the country."