you what I’ll do. I’ll make it and market it, and pay you five cents
royalty on each one.”
Washington sighed. Another dream disappeared; no money in the thing.
So he said:
“All right, take it at that. Draw me a paper. He went his way with the
paper, and dropped the matter out of his mind dropped it out to make room
for further attempts to think out the most promising way to invest his
half of the reward, in case a partnership investment satisfactory to both
beneficiaries could not be hit upon.
He had not been very long at home when Sellers arrived sodden with grief
and booming with glad excitement–working both these emotions
successfully, sometimes separately, sometimes together. He fell on
Hawkins’s neck sobbing, and said:
“Oh, mourn with me my friend, mourn for my desolate house: death has
smitten my last kinsman and I am Earl of Rossmore–congratulate me!”
He turned to his wife, who had entered while this was going on, put his
arms about her and said– “You will bear up, for my sake, my lady–it had
to happen, it was decreed.”
She bore up very well, and said:
“It’s no great loss. Simon Lathers was a poor well-meaning useless thing
and no account, and his brother never was worth shucks.”
The rightful earl continued:
“I am too much prostrated by these conflicting griefs and joys to be able
to concentrate my mind upon affairs; I will ask our good friend here to
break the news by wire or post to the Lady Gwendolen and instruct her
to–”
“What Lady Gwendolen?”
“Our poor daughter, who, alas!–”
“Sally Sellers? Mulberry Sellers, are you losing your mind?”
“There-please do not forget who you are, and who I am; remember your own
dignity, be considerate also of mine. It were best to cease from using
my family name, now, Lady Rossmore.”
“Goodness gracious, well, I never! What am I to call you then?”
“In private, the ordinary terms of endearment will still be admissible,
to some degree; but in public it will be more becoming if your ladyship
will speak to me as my lord, or your lordship, and of me as Rossmore, or
the Earl, or his Lordship, and–”
“Oh, scat! I can’t ever do it, Berry.”
“But indeed you must, my love–we must live up to our altered position
and submit with what grace we may to its requirements.”
“Well, all right, have it your own way; I’ve never set my wishes against
your commands yet, Mul–my lord, and it’s late to begin now, though to my
mind it’s the rottenest foolishness that ever was.”
“Spoken like my own true wife! There, kiss and be friends again.”
“But-Gwendolen! I don’t know how I am ever going to stand that name.
Why, a body wouldn’t know Sally Sellers in it. It’s too large for her;
kind of like a cherub in an ulster, and it’s a most outlandish sort of a
name, anyway, to my mind.”
“You’ll not hear her find fault with it, my lady.”
“That’s a true word. She takes to any kind of romantic rubbish like she
was born to it. She never got it from me, that’s sure. And sending her
to that silly college hasn’t helped the matter any–just the other way.
“Now hear her, Hawkins! Rowena-Ivanhoe College is the selectest and most
aristocratic seat of learning for young ladies in our country. Under no
circumstances can a girl get in there unless she is either very rich and
fashionable or can prove four generations of what may be called American
nobility. Castellated college-buildings–towers and turrets and an
imitation moat–and everything about the place named out of Sir Walter
Scott’s books and redolent of royalty and state and style; and all the
richest girls keep phaetons, and coachmen in livery, and riding-horses,
with English grooms in plug hats and tight-buttoned coats, and top-boots,
and a whip-handle without any whip to it, to ride sixty-three feet behind
them–”
“And they don’t learn a blessed thing, Washington Hawkins, not a single
blessed thing but showy rubbish and un-american pretentiousness. But
send for the Lady Gwendolen–do; for I reckon the peerage regulations
require that she must come home and let on to go into seclusion and mourn