Oh, yes, I’ve been having a darling good time. And do you know, not
one of these collegians has had the cruelty to ask me how I came by
my new name. With some, this is due to charity, but with the others
it isn’t. They refrain, not from native kindness but from educated
discretion. I educated them.
Well, as soon as I shall have settled up what’s left of the old
scores and snuffed up a few more of those pleasantly intoxicating
clouds of incense. I shall pack and depart homeward. Tell papa I
am as fond of him as I am of my new name. I couldn’t put it
stronger than that. What an inspiration it was! But inspirations
come easy to him.
These, from your loving daughter,
GWENDOLEN.
Hawkins reached for the letter and glanced over it.
“Good hand,” he said, “and full of confidence and animation, and goes
racing right along. She’s bright–that’s plain.”
“Oh, they’re all bright–the Sellerses. Anyway, they would be, if there
were any. Even those poor Latherses would have been bright if they had
been Sellerses; I mean full blood. Of course they had a Sellers strain
in them–a big strain of it, too–but being a Bland dollar don’t make it
a dollar just the same.”
The seventh day after the date of the telegram Washington came dreaming
down to breakfast and was set wide awake by an electrical spasm of
pleasure.
Here was the most beautiful young creature he had ever seen in his life.
It was Sally Sellers Lady Gwendolen; she had come in the night. And it
seemed to him that her clothes were the prettiest and the daintiest he
had ever looked upon, and the most exquisitely contrived and fashioned
and combined, as to decorative trimmings, and fixings, and melting
harmonies of color. It was only a morning dress, and inexpensive, but he
confessed to himself, in the English common to Cherokee Strip, that it
was a “corker.” And now, as he perceived, the reason why the Sellers
household poverties and sterilities had been made to blossom like the
rose, and charm the eye and satisfy the spirit, stood explained; here was
the magician; here in the midst of her works, and furnishing in her own
person the proper accent and climaxing finish of the whole.
“My daughter, Major Hawkins–come home to mourn; flown home at the call
of affliction to help the authors of her being bear the burden of
bereavement. She was very fond of the late earl–idolized him, sir,
idolized him–”
“Why, father, I’ve never seen him.”
“True–she’s right, I was thinking of another–er–of her mother–”
“I idolized that smoked haddock?–that sentimental, spiritless–”
“I was thinking of myself! Poor noble fellow, we were inseparable com–”
“Hear the man! Mulberry Sel–Mul–Rossmore–hang the troublesome name I
can never–if I’ve heard you say once, I’ve heard you say a thousand
times that if that poor sheep–”
“I was thinking of–of–I don’t know who I was thinking of, and it
doesn’t make any difference anyway; somebody idolized him, I recollect it
as if it were yesterday; and–”
“Father, I am going to shake hands with Major Hawkins, and let the
introduction work along and catch up at its leisure. I remember you very
well in deed, Major Hawkins, although I was a little child when I saw you
last; and I am very, very glad indeed to see you again and have you in
our house as one of us;” and beaming in his face she finished her cordial
shake with the hope that he had not forgotten her.
He was prodigiously pleased by her outspoken heartiness, and wanted to
repay her by assuring her that he remembered her, and not only that but
better even than he remembered his own children, but the facts would not
quite warrant this; still, he stumbled through a tangled sentence which
answered just as well, since the purport of it was an awkward and
unintentional confession that her extraordinary beauty had so stupefied
him that he hadn’t got back to his bearings, yet, and therefore couldn’t
be certain as to whether he remembered her at all or not. The speech
made him her friend; it couldn’t well help it.