Chapter One

by Mrs. Elizabeth Prentiss
Edited by Amber Moeller

"Well, Horace!"

"Well, Aunt Jane!"

"I thought you were dead and buried!"

"And I hoped you were!"

"On the whole, I am glad you are alive and well, for I am finishing off a piece of work in the greatest haste possible, and want somebody to thread my needles."

"I sha'n't thread a single one; I want you to talk, and you can't talk when you are at work. Besides, I came to get rested, and it tires me to see you sewing. Why will women always persist in going about armed with work-baskets?"

"Why will men persist in wearing out their clothes? Come, take this seat, and give an account of yourself."

The speakers were a little old woman, with bright-eyes, and a tall young man, with a pair of good-humored blue ones. She was not really his aunt, but only an intimate friend, who chose to be called "Aunt Jane," and so Aunt Jane she was.

Horace seated himself, and neither spoke for several minutes. At last he said:

"Upon my word, you are treating me very shabbily, Aunt Jane. I have come all the way up here in this terrible storm to hear you talk, and there you sit, as silent as the grave."

"I really think that among all the people I know you are the greatest hypocrite," was the reply. "You came because you knew that you should probably find me at home this stormy night, and should get a good chance to talk yourself."

"Very well. Since you have the faculty of reading a man's motives, suppose you go on and read out my thoughts of me. What did I come to say?"

"Something ridiculous, no doubt, or you would have unburdened yourself sooner."

"You are too bad, Aunt Jane. If I had not given my solemn promise to tell you all about it, I would not utter another word. However, to be out with it once for all--I'm in love!"

"Pshaw; you know better."

"Indeed, I did not do it on purpose," pursued the young man. "But I met with such a glorious creature---"

"I hate glorious creatures!"

"But I admire them. Just let me tell you---"

"First of all tell me one thing. Is this glorious creature in love with you?"

"Why no, not exactly. That is to say I've never asked her. But she treats me with great consideration."

"I should hope so."

"Aunt Jane, if you hadn't such a knack at making a fellow love and admire you, I should almost hate you."

"I thought glorious creatures were your ideal, and I am not glorious, by any means. My dear boy, if I supposed you were really in earnest in this thing, that your heart was really touched by it, I could become tender and motherly in an instant. You know that."

"Yes, I do," he said, catching warmly in both his the hand she held out to him. "Well, I am in earnest; I am fairly caught at last."

"I am very sorry to hear it," she said, seriously. "For of course you cannot afford to marry this young lady."

"No, nor any young lady," he returned, gloomily.

"Don't be vexed with me if I deny that. It is true that you cannot afford to take a glorious creature to wife; but why not content yourself with one that isn't glorious: a dear little bit of flesh and blood, who would not be above keeping your accounts, mending your stockings and the like? You needn't shake your head."

"I am not shaking it. But you seem to have forgotten that our last quarrel was on this very point. You upbraided me for not marrying, and I told you I couldn't afford it."

"Our last quarrel," she said, musingly--"we've had so many that I really don't remember where it ranks. But I should have said that our last little tiff was on the subject of cigars."

"They came in for their share of abuse, as they always do," he returned.

"Well, to go back to your new flame---"

"My first flame, you mean."

"I mean just what I say. Who talked to me of Anna Perrit by the hour together? Who---"

"That was the merest fancy. Of course, I don't deny my fancies. All young men have them."

"And who carried a photograph o Grace Harrod in his pocket for six months; a stolen one at that?"

"It was a mean thing to rob your album, Aunt Jane, but she was such a pretty creature, and---"

"And such a flirt; yes, I remember; and then there was the affair with Juliet Moore---"

"Really, Aunt Jane, you have the most incovenient memory!" cried Horace, moving uncomfortably in his chair. "To hear you talk, one would fancy me a most fickle as well as a most susceptible youth. What is a man to do? Is he to associate with old ladies only? I don't know a fellow who gallents girls about as little as I do. But if you had no home but a boarding-house, and were welcomed by hald a dozen pleasant families, I have no doubt you would spend some of your evenings in a little harmless chat with the young ladies there."

"If you would once come out, fair and square, and own that you are regular flirt, quite as accomplished in that line as any girl of our acquaintance, I could get on with you. But you beat about the bush, and skulk behind trees, so that one never gets a fair shot at you."

"I don't know about the fair shots, but I do know I've received a good many unfair ones. As to yourself, you never lose a chance. I am sorry that I have owned up about Miss---"

"Well, Miss who?"

"I can't tell her name."

"Then, you'll break your solemn promise. But that won't surprise me."

"You'll only laugh at me when I tell you who it is. Do you know Mr. Fitzsimmons, of the Fifth Avenue?"

"Now Horace Wheeler, you don't pretend to say that you are carried away with that hollow, heartless creature!"

"With Mr. Fitzsimmons? No, not exactly."

"Don't joke about so serious a matter. So, it is Miss Shoddy, after all, to whom you have given your heart!"

"I wish I hated you, Aunt Jane! I came to get a motherly word of counsel, or of sympathy at least, and you do nothing but mock me. Good night; I'm off."

"You dear, foolish boy, you shall do no such thing!" she cried. "You hav'n't in all the world a better friend than I am. I love you as if you were my own, my very own son. Sit down and let us talk this over."

Yes, she did love him, and he knew it. She had befriended him when he came to this great city years before; had opened her home and heart to him; had scolded, petted, laughed at, borne with him as no one else had done since his mother, her dearest friend, had left him alone in the world. And though, in some moods, she provoked him, and hunted all his little bad habits unto death, he loved her with almost filial affection.

"You women are all alike," he said, subsiding into his seat again. "You banter, and hector, and badger us till we are angry with you, and then you magically entice us back into your hearts. I don't know how you do it; I wish I did."

"I can tell you how we do it," she said earnestly. "It is by being geniune. There is no art or trickery in the a true woman. She will not flatter, she will not stoop to humour pet vices, but fighting and conquering them, she will give her whole loving heart to him she had thus blessed."

Horace looked into the face now full of expression and of feeling, with almost boyish admiration.

"If you always looked and talked as you do now," he said, "you would spoil me for the ordinary run of girls. I should form a new ideal, and marry not till I found her."

"You would get tired of me if I were always on stilts," she said, smilingly. "Why should not a woman be like nature, sometimes spring, sometimes autumn; now summer, now winter? But, Horace, I must once more repeat, at the risk of offending and repelling you, that you are on the wrong track. You are trying to live in the world, mingling in all its gaieties and follies, and expecting a great deal from it, but doing nothing to make it wiser and better. You have worked your way into what you call good society, but that has made a great gulf between yourself and Christian society. Now, just answer this one question; how many really warm friends have you in this city?"

"Why, as to that, I do not know that I have any. But the people with whom I associate are well bred, agreeable, and refined. And really, Aunt Jane, you can't expect a young man, situated as I am, to be as strict as you are. I think one can be good without turning one's back upon the world."

"May I ask you one more question, Horace? Are you living a life of prayer amid all the distractions of the times?"

"That is a question you have no right to ask," he said, coloring.

"Perhapes it is," she said, gently. "There was a time in my history when I should have resented such a question; yet it was a time when it would have been well for my soul had some loving voice asked it. The thought of your throwing yourself away on a mere worldly, fashionable young lady, you who are so formed for a sweet Christian home, makes me shudder."

"I can't imagine how you keep up your interest in me, while we differ so on what you consider vital points."

"I will tell you," she said. "Had my boy lived he would be just your age, and I have associated you with his memory. And just as my prayers would have pulled him out of a dangerous path, so I believe they will pull you."

"It must be comfortable to have such a faith in one's own prayers," he said, thoughtlessly.

Her eyes filled with tears.

"It is not faith in my prayers, but faith in Him who dictates them," she said. "Dear Horace, don't stay away so long again; bear with my little sermons for the sake of my love to you."

"I will," he said; "but you will never make me feel as you do."

To be continued ...

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