CHAPTER X.
“ONCE MORE TO THE BREACH.”
Poor Manton was not permitted to remain in peace at his labors long. On the afternoon of the same day, Doctor E. Willamot Weasel, scarcely taking time to announce himself by a sharp knock, bolted into the room, exclaiming—
“Ah! my dear friend, pardon me; but the lady concerning whom I spoke to you, is now in the parlor below, and requests the pleasure of an interview.”
A frown instantly darkened the brow of Manton, and he answered angrily—
“Sir! you will remember that I expressed to you, most distinctly, a disinclination for such an introduction. I told you I did not wish to know this woman, then, and I feel still less inclination to know her now.”
“But, a-ah! my dear sir, you would not surely be unkind enough to refuse to see the lady now, when she waits in the parlor, in momentary expectation of seeing you—for the servant told her you were in? It certainly can do you no harm to be courteous.”
“That’s a strong appeal to make to a Southerner, Doctor Weasel, it must be confessed.”
“Yes,” said he, rubbing his hands, “I thought you could not disregard it. I am so anxious to bring you together! Do come. I shall be delighted. Come! pray come! she is waiting.”
“Doctor Weasel, I do this thing with great reluctance,” said Manton, rising. “I suppose I must go; but rest assured, I do not feel particularly obliged to you for forcing me into this position.”
This was said in a very cold, measured tone; but the Doctor’s delight at the prospect of accomplishing his favorite and benevolent scheme, was so great, that his excitement prevented him from observing it.
“Never mind, come along; you will thank me for it, on the contrary, as long as you live.”
Manton left the room with him, and when they reached the parlor, he was rapidly introduced to Mrs. Orne and her daughter, who sat upon a lounge awaiting him. The Doctor instantly darted out of the room; and Manton was left vis-a-vis with his ecstatic correspondent.
As the woman rose to meet him, the blood mounted to her very plain face, and square, compact, masculine forehead. The child, which was an ugly, impish-looking girl, with a mean forehead, wide mouth and projecting chin, nevertheless arrested the eye of Manton, as he sat down, by a mournful expression of suffering in her light gray eye.
The woman was evidently embarrassed for a moment, by the studied coldness of Manton’s manner, whose eye continued to dwell upon the half-quaker, and half-tawdry dress, rather than upon the face that had at the first glance impressed him so disagreeably.
“I have found you out, at last!” said the lady visitor, in a low, pleasing voice. “Now I have ventured into the tiger’s den, I hope he will not eat me!”
“You are perfectly safe, madam!” was the stiff response to this sally. “But to what may I owe the honor of this visit? Is there anything I can do for you?”
The blood mounted quickly to the woman’s forehead as she answered hastily, “Yes, I wanted to know if you can furnish me with a copy of all your works! I have admired with so much intensity what I have seen—but I am afraid you are very much of a naughty boy—you look so cold and cross! I am almost afraid to ask you!”
“I am very sorry, madam, I have written no works, as you are pleased to call them. What I have done is entirely fragmentary, and I have not collected those fragments even for myself,” was the unbending reply.
“Oh, yes, you have! I have seen many of them, and you need not be ashamed to own them, for there is nothing of the kind in literature to surpass them. Why, there’s ——,” and she ran on with a ready list of what she termed works, not a little to the surprise of Manton, who only listened with a cold stare, and bowed profoundly, as she concluded with a high-wrought panegyric.
“I am sorry I have no such works in my possession, nor can I tell you where they can be obtained!”
The woman grew very red in the face again, and bit her lips in vexation, while Manton remained silent. She soon rallied, however, and commenced a conversation upon the general literature of the day, in which Manton, in spite of himself, was gradually interested, by a certain sharp epigrammatic method of uttering heresies, and bold paradoxes, which seemed to be peculiar to her mind, and which could not but prove refreshing to one, who, like Manton, most heartily detested commonplace.
He, however, did not unbend in the slightest, and the woman, who finally, in despair of “getting at him,” rose to depart, said, yet perseveringly, with winning badinage—
“I find you in a naughty humor to-day. You are as cold as an iceberg and sharp as a nor’wester. When you get to be a good boy, you may come and see me!”
“When I do, madam, I shall surely come!” was the response, accompanied by a very low bow, and delivered in a tone that would have frost-bitten the ear of a polar bear.
The discomfited woman hurried from the parlor with the blood almost bursting from her face, while Manton, turning on his heel, muttered—
“Well! if that does not freeze her off, she ought to be canonised!”