Bart Ridgeley. A. G. Riddle
received our fall fashions, and it is not the fall style this year to give and take hands after an absence."
"A-h! how popular that will be with poor masculines! Is that to be worn by all of you?"
"I don't know," said Kate; "it is not fall with some of us yet."
"Thank you! and may I ask Miss Markham if it was the spring and summer style not to say good-bye at a parting?"
The tone was gay, but there was something more in it, and the girl replied: "That depends upon the lady, I presume; both styles may be varied at her pleasure."
"Ah, I think I understand! You are kind to explain."
"Mr. Barton," said Lizzie, "Flora and I here cannot determine about our colors"—holding up some gay ribbons—"and the rest can't help us out. What do you think of them?"
"That they are brilliant," answered Barton, looking both steadily and innocently in the faces, in a way that deepened their hues.
"Oh, no! these ribbons?" exclaimed the blushing girl, thrusting them towards his eyes.
"Indeed I am color blind, though not wholly blind to color." And a little ripple of laughter ran over the bright group, and then they all laughed again.
Can any one tell why a young girl laughs, save that she is happy and joyous? If she does or says anything, she laughs, and if she don't, she laughs, and her companions laugh because she does, and then they all laugh, and then laugh again because they laughed before, and then they look at each other and laugh again; thus they did now, and Barton could no more tell what they were laughing at than could they; he was not so foolishly jealous as to imagine that they were laughing at him.
Then Kate turned to him: "You won't go away again, I hope. We are going to have a little party before long, and you must come, and I want to see you waltz with my cousin. She waltzes beautifully, and I want to see her with a good partner. Will you come?"
"Indeed I would be most happy; but your compliment is ironical. You know we don't waltz, and none of us can, if we try."
"Is that the awful dance where the gentleman takes the lady around the waist, and she leans on him, and they go swinging around? Oh, I think that is awful!"
"The Germans, and many of our best ladies, and gentlemen, waltz," replied Miss Walters, "as they do in Baltimore and New York, and I suppose my cousin thought no harm could be said of it at her little party."
"Oh, I am sure I did not mean that it was wrong, and I would like to see the dance!" was the eager disclaimer.
Barton had drawn away from this discussion, and lingered a moment near Julia, to ask after her mother. She replied that Mrs. Markham was very well, but did not ask him to call and see for himself, nor did she in any way encourage him to prolong the conversation. So, with a little badinage and persiflage, he took his leave.
I shall not attempt to set down what was said of him after he left, nor will I affirm that anything was said. Young ladies, for aught I know, occasionally talk up young men among themselves, and if they do it is nobody's business.
CHAPTER V.
MRS. MARKHAM'S VIEWS.
In the gathering twilight, in a parlor at the Markham mansion, sat Julia by the piano, resting her head on one hand, while with the other she brought little ripples of music from the keys; sometimes a medley, then single and prolonged notes, like heavy drops of water into a deep pool, and then a twinkling shower of melody. She was not sad, or pensive, or thoughtful; but in one of these quiet, sweet, and grave moods that come to deep natures—as a cloud passing over deep, still water enables one under its shadow to see into its depths. Her mother stood at an open window, inhaling the evening fragrance of flowers, and occasionally listening to the wild note of the mysterious whippoorwill, that came from a thicket of forest-trees in the distance.
The step of her father caught the ear of the young girl, who sprang up and ran towards him with eager face and sparkle of eye and voice.
"Oh, papa, the trunks came this afternoon, with the fashion-plates, and patterns, and everything, and all we girls—Nell, Kate Fisher, Miss Flora Walter, Pearlie, Ann, and all hands of us—have had a regular 'opening.' We went through with them all. The cottage bonnet is a love of a thing, and I am going to have it trimmed for myself. Sleeves are bigger than ever, and there were lots of splendid things!"
"And so Roberts has suited you all, for once, has he?" said the Judge, passing an arm around her small waist.
"Roberts! Faugh, he had nothing to do with it. Aunt Mary selected them all herself. They are the latest and newest from Paris—almost direct."
"Does that make them better?"
"Well, I don't know that there is anything in their coming from Paris, except that one likes to know that they come from the beginning-place of such things. Now if they had been made in Boston, New York, or Baltimore, one would not be certain they were like the right thing; and now we know they are the real thing itself. Do you understand?"
"Oh, yes—as well as a man may; and it is quite well put, too, and I don't know that I ever had so clear an idea of the value of things from a distance before."
"Well, you see, when a thing comes clear from the farthest off, we know there ain't anything beyond; and when it comes from the beginning, we don't take it second hand."
"I see; but why do you care, you girls in this far-off, rude region?"
"Mamma, do you hear that? Here is my own especial father, and your husband, asking me, a woman, and a very young woman too, for a reason."
"It is because you are a very young one that he expects you to give a reason. Perhaps he thinks you will not claim the privilege of our sex."
"Well, I won't. Now, then, Papa Judge, this is not a far-off, rude region, and you see that the French ladies want these styles and fashions, and all that; well, if they want them, we want them too."
"Now I don't quite see. How do you know they want them? Perhaps they are sent here because they don't want them; and, besides, why should a backwoods girl in Ohio want what a high-born lady in the French capital wants?"
"Because the American girl is a woman; and, besides, the court must hear and decide, and not ask absurd questions."
"And who is to see you in French millinery, here in the woods?"
"Oh, bless its foolish man's heart, that thinks a woman dresses to please its taste, when it hasn't any! We dress to please ourselves and plague each other—don't you know that? and we ain't pleased with poky home-made things."
"Julia! Mother," appealed the Judge, with uplifted hands, to Mrs.
Markham, "where did this young lady get her notions?"
"From the common source of woman's notions, as you call them, I presume—her feelings and fancies; and she is merely letting you see the workings of a woman's mind. We should all betray our sex a hundred times a day, if our blessed husbands and fathers had the power to understand us, I fear."
"And don't we understand you?"
"Of course you do, as well as you ever will. My dear husband, don't you also understand that if you fully comprehended us, or we you, we should lose interest in each other? that now we may be a perpetual revelation and study to each other, and so never become worn and common?"
"There, Papa Judge, are you satisfied—not with our arguments, but with us?"
"The man who was not would be unreasonable and—"
"Man-like," put in Julia. "Let me sing you my new song."
A piano was a novelty in Northern Ohio. Julia played with a real skill