Bad Hugh | Page 2

would be
to them a beacon light to guide them on their way. Nobody would look
in upon them, as Adaline, or 'Lina as she chose to be called, and as all
did call her except himself, seemed to think there might, and even if
they did, why need she care? To be sure she was not quite as fixey as
she was on pleasant days when there was a possibility of visitors, and
her cheeks were not quite so red, but she was looking well enough, and
she'd undone all those little tags or braids which disfigured her so
shockingly in the morning, but which, when brushed and carefully
arranged, did give her hair that waving appearance she so much desired.
As for himself, he never meant to do anything of which he was
ashamed, so he did not care how many were watching him through the
window, and stamping his heavy boots upon the rug, for he had just
come in from the storm Hugh Worthington piled fresh fuel upon the
fire, and, shaking back the mass of short brown curls which had fallen
upon his forehead, strode across the room and arranged the shades to
his own liking, paying no heed when his more fastidious sister, with a
frown upon her dark, handsome face, muttered something about the
"Stanley taste."
"There, Kelpie, lie there," he continued, returning to the hearth, and,
addressing a small, white, shaggy dog, which, with a human look in its
round, pink eyes, obeyed the voice it knew and loved, and crouched
down in the corner at a safe distance from the young lady, whom it
seemed instinctively to know as an enemy.

"Do, pray, Hugh, let the dirty things stay where they are," 'Lina
exclaimed, as she saw her brother walk toward the dining-room, and
guessed his errand. "Nobody wants a pack of dogs under their feet. I
wonder you don't bring in your pet horse, saddle and all."
"I did want to when I heard how piteously he cried after me as I left the
stable to-night," said Hugh, at the same time opening a door leading out
upon a back piazza, and, uttering a peculiar whistle, which brought
around him at once the pack of dogs which so annoyed his sister.
"I'd be a savage altogether if I were you!" was the sister's angry remark,
to which Hugh paid no heed.
It was his house, his fire, and if he chose to have his dogs there, he
should, for all of Ad, but when the pale, gentle-looking woman,
knitting so quietly in her accustomed chair, looked up and said
imploringly:
"Please turn them into the kitchen, they'll surely be comfortable there,"
he yielded at once, for that pale, gentle woman, was his mother, and, to
her wishes, Hugh was generally obedient.
The room was cleared of all its canine occupants, save Kelpie, who
Hugh insisted should remain, the mother resumed her knitting, and
Adaline her book, while Hugh sat down before the blazing fire, and,
with his hands crossed above his head, went on into a reverie, the
nature of which his mother, who was watching him, could not guess;
and when at last she asked of what he was thinking so intently, he made
her no reply. He could hardly have told himself, so varied were the
thoughts crowding upon his brain that wintry night. Now they were of
the eccentric old man, who had been to him a father, and from whom
he had received Spring Bank, together with the many peculiar ideas
which made him the strange, odd creature he was, a puzzle and a
mystery to his own sex, and a kind of terror to the female portion of the
neighborhood, who looked upon him as a woman-hater, and avoided or
coveted his not altogether disagreeable society, just as their fancy
dictated. For years the old man and the boy had lived together alone in
that great, lonely house, enjoying vastly the freedom from all restraint,

the liberty of turning the parlors into kennels if they chose, and
converting the upper rooms into a hay-loft, if they would. No white
woman was ever seen upon the premises, unless she came as a beggar,
when some new gown, or surplice, or organ, or chandelier, was needed
for the pretty little church, lifting its modest spire so unobtrusively
among the forest trees, not very far from Spring Bank. John Stanley
didn't believe in churches; nor gowns, nor organs, nor women, but he
was proverbially liberal, and so the fair ones of Glen's Creek
neighborhood ventured into his den, finding it much pleasanter to do so
after the handsome, dark-haired boy came to live with him; for about
that frank, outspoken boy there was then something very attractive to
the little