Excerpt
MORE CONFIDENCES THAN ONE.
"You and your sister have been insured, of course," said the Gospeler toMONTGOMERY PENDRAGON, as they returned from escorting Mr. SCHENCK.
"Of course," echoed MONTGOMERY, with a suppressed moan. "He is our guardian, and has trampled us into a couple of policies. We had to yield, or excess of Boreal conversation would have made us maniacs."
"You speak bitterly for one so young," observed the Reverend OCTAVIUSSIMPSON. "Is it derangement of the stomach, or have you known sorrow?"
"Heaps of sorrow," answered the young man. "You may be aware, sir, that my sister and I belong to a fine old heavily mortgaged Southern family—the PENRUTHERSES and MUNCHAUSENS of Chipmunk Court House, Virginia, are our relatives—and that SHERMAN marched through us during the late southward projection of certain of your Northern military scorpions. After our father's felo-desease, ensuing remotely from an overstrain in attempting to lift a large mortgage, our mother gave us a step-father of Northern birth, who tried to amend our constitutions and reconstruct us."
"Dreadful!" murmured the Gospeler.
"We hated him! MAGNOLIA threw her scissors at him several times. My sister, sir, does not know what fear is. She would fight a lion; inheriting the spirit from our father, who, I have heard said, frequently fought a tiger. She can fire a gun and pick off a State Senator as well as any man in all the South. Our mother died. A few mornings thereafter our step-father was found dead in his bed, and the doctors said he died of a pair of scissors which he must have swallowed accidentally in his youth, and which were found, after his death, to have worked themselves several inches out of his side, near the heart."
"Swallowed a pair of scissors!" exclaimed the Reverend OCTAVIUS.
"He might have had a stitch in his side at the time, you know, and wanted to cut it," explained MONTGOMERY. "At any rate, after that we became wards of Mr. SCHENCK, up North here. And now let me ask you, sir, is this Mr. EDWIN DROOD a student with you?"
"No. He is visiting his uncle, Mr. BUMSTEAD," answered the Gospeler, who could not free his mind from the horrible thought that his young companion's fearless sister might have been in some way acscissory to the sudden cutting off of her step-father's career.
"Is Miss FLORA POTTS his sister?"
Mr. SIMPSON told the story of the betrothal of the young couple by their respective departed parents.
"Oh, that's the game, eh?" said MONTGOMERY. "I understand now his whispering to me that he wished he was dead." In a moment afterwards they re-entered the house in Gospeler's Gulch.
The air was slightly laden with the odor of cloves as they went into the parlor, and Mr. BUMSTEAD was at the piano, accompanying the Flowerpot while she sang. Executing without notes, and with his stony gaze fixed intently between the nose and chin of the singer, Mr. BUMSTEAD had a certain mesmeric appearance of controlling the words coming out of the rosy mouth. Standing beside Miss POTTS was MAGNOLIA PENDRAGON, seemingly fascinated, as it were, by the BUMSTEAD method of playing, in which the performer's fingers performed almost as frequently upon the woodwork of the instrument as upon the keys....