"I don"t think you know what you are saying, Clarence. I"m older than you are. I thought you looked upon me as a sort of mother or older sister."
"Only fifteen months older," retorted Clarence. "I never heard of any one"s being a mother at that age. I"m a man now, I would have you remember, though I am a little younger than you, and know my own mind as well as if I were fifty. Dear Clovy," coaxingly, "couldn"t you? You liked the High Valley, didn"t you? I"d do anything possible to make it nice and pleasant for you."
"I do like the High Valley very much," said Clover, still with the feeling that Clarence must be half in joke, or she half in dream. "But, my dear boy, it isn"t my home. I couldn"t leave papa and the children, and stay out here, even with you. It would seem so strange and far away."
"You could if you cared for me," replied Clarence, dejectedly; Clover"s kind, argumentative, elder-sisterly tone was precisely that which is most discouraging to a lover.
"Oh, dear," cried poor Clover, not far from tears herself; "this is dreadful!"
"What?" moodily. "Having an offer? You must have had lots of them before now."
"Indeed I never did. People don"t do such things in Burnet. Please don"t say any more, Clarence. I"m very fond of you, just as I am of the boys; but--"
"But what? Go on."
"How can I?" Clover was fairly crying.
"You mean that you can"t love me in the other way."
"Yes." The word came out half as a sob, but the sincerity of the accent was unmistakable.
"Well," said poor Clarence, after a long bitter pause; "it isn"t your fault, I suppose. I"m not good enough for you. Still, I"d have done my best, if you would have taken me, Clover."
"I am sure you would," eagerly. "You"ve always been my favorite cousin, you know. People can"t _make_ themselves care for each other; it has to come in spite of them or not at all,--at least, that is what the novels say. But you"re not angry with me, are you, dear? We will be good friends always, sha"n"t we?" persuasively.
"I wonder if we can," said Clarence, in a hopeless tone. "It doesn"t seem likely; but I don"t know any more about it than you do. It"s my first offer as well as yours." Then, after a silence and a struggle, he added in a more manful tone, "We"ll try for it, at least. I can"t afford to give you up. You"re the sweetest girl in the world. I always said so, and I say so still. It will be hard at first, but perhaps it may grow easier with time."
"Oh, it will," cried Clover, hopefully. "It"s only because you"re so lonely out here, and see so few people, that makes you suppose I am better than the rest. One of these days you"ll find a girl who is a great deal nicer than I am, and then you"ll be glad that I didn"t say yes. There! the rain is just stopping."
"It"s easy enough to talk," remarked Clarence, gloomily, as he gathered up the bridles of the horses; "but I shall do nothing of the kind. I declare I won"t!"
CHAPTER X.
NO. 13 PIUTE STREET.
Clover did not see Clarence again for several days after this conversation, the remembrance of which was uncomfortable to her. She feared he was feeling hurt or "huffy," and would show it in his manner; and she disliked very much the idea that Phil might suspect the reason, or, worse still, Mr. Templestowe.
But when he finally appeared he seemed much the same as usual. After all, she reflected, it has only been a boyish impulse; he has already got over it, or not meant all he said.
In this she did Clarence an injustice. He had been very much in earnest when he spoke; and it showed the good stuff which was in him and his real regard for Clover that he should be making so manly a struggle with his disappointment and pain. His life had been a lonely one in Colorado; he could not afford to quarrel with his favorite cousin, and with him, as with other lovers, there may have been, besides, some lurking hope that she might yet change her mind. But perhaps Clover in a measure was right in her conviction that Clarence was still too young and undeveloped to have things go very deep with him. He seemed to her in many ways as boyish and as undisciplined as Phil.
With early September the summering of the Ute Park came to a close. The cold begins early at that elevation, and light frosts and red leaves warned the dwellers in tents and cabins to flee.
Clover made her preparations for departure with real reluctance. She had grown very fond of the place; but Phil was perfectly himself again, and there seemed no reason for their staying longer.
So back to St. Helen"s they went and to Mrs. Marsh, who, in reply to Clover"s letter, had written that she must make room for them somehow, though for the life of her she couldn"t say how. It proved to be in two small back rooms. An irruption of Eastern invalids had filled the house to overflowing, and new faces met them at every turn. Two or three of the last summer"s inmates had died during their stay,--one of them the very sick man whose room Mrs. Watson had coveted. His death took place "as if on purpose," she told Clover, the very week after her removal to the Shoshone.
Mrs. Watson herself was preparing for return to the East. "I"ve seen the West now," she said,--"all I want to see; and I"m quite ready to go back to my own part of the country. Ellen writes that she thinks I"d better start for home so as to get settled before the cold--And it"s so cold here that I can"t realize that they"re still in the middle of peaches at home.
Ellen always spices a great--They"re better than preserves; and as for the canned ones, why, peaches and water is what I call them. Well--my dear--"
(Distance lends enchantment, and Clover had become "My dear" again.) "I"m glad I could come out and help you along; and now that you know so many people here, you won"t need me so much as you did at first. I shall tell Mrs. Perkins to write to Mrs. Hall to tell your father how well your brother is looking, and I know he"ll be--And here"s a little handkerchief for a keepsake."
It was a pretty handkerchief, of pale yellow silk with embroidered corners, and Clover kissed the old lady as she thanked her, and they parted good friends. But their intercourse had led her to make certain firm resolutions.
"I will try to keep my mind clear and my talk clear; to learn what I want and what I have a right to want and what I mean to say, so as not to puzzle and worry people when I grow old, by being vague and helpless and fussy," she reflected. "I suppose if I don"t form the habit now, I sha"n"t be able to then, and it would be dreadful to end by being like poor Mrs.
Watson."
Altogether, Mrs. Marsh"s house had lost its homelike character; and it was not strange that under the circ.u.mstances Phil should flag a little. He was not ill, but he was out of sorts and dismal, and disposed to consider the presence of so many strangers as a personal wrong. Clover felt that it was not a good atmosphere for him, and anxiously revolved in her mind what was best to do. The Shoshone was much too expensive; good boarding-houses in St. Helen"s were few and far between, and all of them shared in a still greater degree the disadvantages which had made themselves felt at Mrs.
Marsh"s.
The solution to her puzzle came--as solutions often do--unexpectedly. She was walking down Piute Street on her way to call on Alice Blanchard, when her attention was attracted to a small, shut-up house, on which was a sign: "No. 13. To Let, Furnished." The sign was not printed, but written on a half-sheet of foolscap, which was what led Clover to notice it.
She studied the house a while, then opened the gate, and went in. Two or three steps led to a little piazza. She seated herself on the top step, and tried to peep in at the closed blinds of the nearest window.
While she was doing so, a woman with a shawl over her head came hastily down a narrow side street or alley, and approached her.
"Oh, did you want the key?" she said.
"The key?" replied Clover, surprised; "of this house, do you mean?"
"Yes. Mis Starkey left it with me when she went away, because, she said, it was handy, and I could give it to anybody who wished to look at the place. You"re the first that has come; so when I see you setting here, I just ran over. Did Mr. Beloit send you?"
"No; n.o.body sent me. Is it Mr. Beloit who has the letting of the house?"
"Yes; but I can let folks in. I told Mis Starkey I"d air and dust a little now and then, if it wasn"t took. Poor soul! she was anxious enough about it; and it all had to be done on a sudden, and she in such a heap of trouble that she didn"t know which way to turn. It was just lock-up and go!"
"Tell me about her," said Clover, making room on the step for the woman to sit down.
"Well, she come out last year with her man, who had lung trouble, and he wasn"t no better at first, and then he seemed to pick up for a while; and they took this house and fixed themselves to stay for a year, at least.
They made it real nice, too, and slicked up considerable. Mis Starkey said, said she, "I don"t want to spend no more money on it than I can help, but Mr. Starkey must be made comfortable," says she, them was her very words. He used to set out on this stoop all day long in the summer, and she alongside him, except when she had to be indoors doing the work.
She didn"t keep no regular help. I did the washing for her, and come in now and then for a day to clean; so she managed very well.
"Then,--Wednesday before last, it was,--he had a bleeding, and sank away like all in a minute, and was gone before the doctor could be had. Mis Starkey was all stunned like with the shock of it; and before she had got her mind cleared up so"s to order about anything, come a telegraph to say her son was down with diphtheria, and his wife with a young baby, and both was very low. And between one and the other she was pretty near out of her wits. We packed her up as quick as we could, and he was sent off by express; and she says to me, "Mis Kenny, you see how "t is. I"ve got this house on my hands till May. There"s no time to see to anything, and I"ve got no heart to care; but if any one"ll take it for the winter, well and good; and I"ll leave the sheets and table-cloths and everything in it, because it may make a difference, and I don"t mind about them nohow. And if no one does take it, I"ll just have to bear the loss," says she. Poor soul! she was in a world of trouble, surely."
"Do you know what rent she asks for the house?" said Clover, in whose mind a vague plan was beginning to take shape.
"Twenty-five a month was what she paid; and she said she"d throw the furniture in for the rest of the time, just to get rid of the rent."
Clover reflected. Twenty-five dollars a week was what they were paying at Mrs. Marsh"s. Could they take this house and live on the same sum, after deducting the rent, and perhaps get this good-natured-looking woman to come in for a certain number of hours and help do the work? She almost fancied that they could if they kept no regular servant.
"I think I _would_ like to see the house," she said at last, after a silent calculation and a scrutinizing look at Mrs. Kenny, who was a faded, wiry, but withal kindly-looking person, shrewd and clean,--a North of Ireland Protestant, as she afterward told Clover. In fact, her accent was rather Scotch than Irish.
They went in. The front door opened into a minute hall, from which another door led into a back hall with a staircase. There was a tiny sitting-room, an equally tiny dining-room, a small kitchen, and above, two bedrooms and a sort of unplastered s.p.a.ce, which would answer to put trunks in. That was all, save a little woodshed. Everything was bare and scanty and rather particularly ugly. The sitting-room had a frightful paper of mingled mustard and mola.s.ses tint, and a matted floor; but there was a good-sized open fireplace for the burning of wood, in which two bricks did duty for andirons, three or four splint and cane bottomed chairs, a lounge, and a table, while the pipe of the large "Morning-glory" stove in the dining-room expanded into a sort of drum in the chamber above. This secured a warm sleeping place for Phil. Clover began to think that they could make it do.
Mrs. Kenny, who evidently considered the house as a wonder of luxury and convenience, opened various cupboards, and pointed admiringly to the gla.s.s and china, the kitchen tins and utensils, and the cotton sheets and pillow-cases which they respectively held.