Bad Hugh. Mary Jane Holmes
little sister. I'll send you out a score, if you say so," and John laughed.
"Has anything of importance occurred in this slow old town?" he inquired, after Anna had become reconciled to her loss. "Are the people as odd as usual?"
"Yes, more so," Miss Eudora thought, "and more presuming," whereupon she rehearsed the annoyances to which they had been subjected from their changed circumstances, dwelling at length upon Mrs. Roe's tea drinking, and the insult offered by inviting them, when she knew there would be no one present with whom they associated.
"You forget Mrs. Johnson," interposed Anna. "We would be glad to know her better than we do, she is so refined and cultivated in all her tastes, while Alice is the sweetest girl I ever knew. By the way, brother, they have come here since you left, consequently you have a rare pleasure in store, the forming their acquaintance."
"Whose, the old or the young lady's?" John asked.
"Both," was Anna's reply. "The mother is very youthful in her appearance. Why, she scarcely looks older than I, and I, you know, am thirty-two."
As if fearful lest her own age should come next under consideration, Miss Eudora hastened to say:
"Yes, Mrs. Johnson does look very young, and Alice seems like a child. Such beautiful hair as she has. It used to be a bright yellow, or golden, but now it has a darker, richer shade, while her eyes are the softest, handsomest blue."
Alice Johnson was evidently a favorite, and this stamped her somebody, so John began to ask who the Johnsons were.
Mrs. Richards seemed disposed to answer, which she did as follows:
"Mrs. Johnson used to live in Boston, and her husband was grandson of old Governor Johnson."
"Ah, yes," and John began to laugh. "I see now what gives Miss Alice's hair that peculiar shade, and her eyes that heavenly blue; but go on, mother, and give her figure as soon as may be."
"What do you mean?" asked Anna. "I should suppose you'd care more for her face than her form."
John smiled mischievously, while his mother continued:
"I fancy that Mrs. Johnson's family met with a reverse of fortune before her marriage. I do not see her as often as I would like to, for I am greatly pleased with her, although she has some habits of which I cannot approve. Why, I hear that Alice had a party the other day consisting-wholly of ragged urchins."
"They were her Sabbath school scholars," interposed Anna.
"I vote that Anna goes on with Alice's history. She gives it best," said John, and so Anna continued:
"There is but little more to tell. Mrs. Johnson and her daughter are both nice ladies, and I am sure you will like them—everybody does; and rumor has already given Alice to our young clergyman, Mr. Howard."
"And she is worth fifty thousand dollars, too," rejoined Asenath.
"I have her figure at last," said John, winking slyly at Anna.
And, indeed, the fifty thousand dollars did seem to make an impression on the young man, who grew interested at once, making numerous inquiries, asking where he would be most likely to see her.
"At church," was Anna's reply. "She is always there, and their pew joins ours."
Dr. Richards was exceedingly vain, and his vanity manifested itself from the tie of his neckerchief down to the polish of his boots. Once, had Hugh Worthington known him intimately, he would have admitted that there was at least one man whose toilet occupied quite as much time as Adaline's. In Paris the vain doctor had indulged in the luxury of a valet, carefully keeping it a secret from his mother and sisters, who were often compelled to deny themselves that the money he asked for so often might be forthcoming. But that piece of extravagance was over now; he dared not bring his valet home, though he sadly wished him there as he meditated upon the appearance he would make in church next Sabbath. He was glad there was something new and interesting in Snowdon in the shape of a pretty girl, for he did not care to return at once to New York, where he had intended practicing his profession. There were too many sad memories clustering about that city to make it altogether desirable, but Dr. Richards was not yet a hardened wretch, and thoughts of another than Alice Johnson, with her glorious hair and still more glorious figure, crowded upon his mind as on that first evening of his return, he sat answering questions and asking others of his own.
It was late ere the family group broke up, and the storm, beating so furiously upon Spring Bank, was just making its voice heard around Terrace Hill mansion, when the doctor took the lamp the servant brought, and bidding his mother and sisters good-night, ascended the stairs whither Anna had gone before him. She was not, however, in bed, and called softly to him:
"John, Brother John, come in a moment, please."
CHAPTER V
ANNA AND JOHN
He found her in a tasteful gown, its heavy tassels almost sweeping the floor, while her long, glossy hair, loosened from its confinement of ribbon and comb, covered her neck and shoulders as she sat before the fire always kindled in her room.
"How picturesque you look," he said, gayly.
"John," and Anna's voice was soft and pleasing, "was Charlie greatly changed? Tell me, please."
"I was so young in the days when he came wooing that I hardly remember how he used to look. I should not have known him, but my impression is that he looks about as well as men of forty usually look."
"Not forty, John, only thirty-eight," Anna interposed.
"Well, thirty-eight, then. You remember his age remarkably well," John said, laughingly, adding: "Did you once love him very much?"
"Yes," and Anna's voice faltered a little.
"Why didn't you marry him, then?"
John spoke excitedly, and the flush deepened on his cheek when Anna answered meekly:
"Why didn't you marry that poor girl?"
"Why didn't I?" and John started to his feet; then he continued: "Anna, I tell you there's a heap of wrong for somebody to answer for, but it is not you, and it is not me—it's—it's mother!" and John whispered the word, as if fearful lest the proud, overbearing woman should hear.
"You are mistaken," Anna replied, "for as far as Charlie was concerned father had more to do with it than mother. I've never seen him since. He did marry another, but I've never quite believed that he forgot me."
Anna was talking now more to herself than to John, and Charlie, could he have seen her, would have said she was not far from the narrow way which leadeth unto life. To John her white face, irradiated with gleams of the soft firelight, was as the face of an angel, and for a time he kept silence before her, then suddenly exclaimed:
"Anna, you are good, and so was she, so good, so pure, so artless, and that made it hard to leave her, to give her up. Anna, do you know what my mother wrote me? Listen, while I tell, then see if she is not to blame. She cruelly reminded me that by my father's will all of us, save you, were wholly dependent upon her, and said the moment I threw myself away upon a low, vulgar, penniless girl, that moment she'd cast me off, and I might earn my bread and hers as best I could. She said, too, my sisters, Anna and all, sanctioned what she wrote, and your opinion had more weight than all the rest."
"Oh, John, mother could not have so misconstrued my words. Surely my note explained—I sent one in mother's letter."
"It never reached me," John said, while Anna sighed at this proof