Beasleys Christmas Party | Page 8

and fixed me with her
glittering eye. "Well, of all!"
"Is it so surprising?"
The lady gave her boat to the waves again. "Ann Apperthwaite thinks
about him still!" she said, with something like vindictiveness. "I've
always suspected it. She thought you were new to the place and didn't
know anything about it all, or anybody to mention it to. That's it!"
"I'm still new to the place," I urged, "and still don't know anything
about it all."
"They used to be engaged," was her succinct and emphatic answer.
I found it but too illuminating. "Oh, oh!" I cried. "I WAS an innocent,
wasn't I?"
"I'm glad she DOES think of him," said my cousin. "It serves her right.
I only hope HE won't find it out, because he's a poor, faithful creature;
he'd jump at the chance to take her back--and she doesn't deserve him."
"How long has it been," I asked, "since they used to be engaged?"
"Oh, a good while--five or six years ago, I think--maybe more; time
skips along. Ann Apperthwaite's no chicken, you know." (Such was the
lady's expression.) "They got engaged just after she came home from
college, and of all the idiotically romantic girls--"
"But she's a teacher," I interrupted, "of mathematics."
"Yes." She nodded wisely. "I always thought that explained it: the
romance is a reaction from the algebra. I never knew a person
connected with mathematics or astronomy or statistics, or any of those

exact things, who didn't have a crazy streak in 'em SOMEwhere.
They've got to blow off steam and be foolish to make up for putting in
so much of their time at hard sense. But don't you think that I dislike
Ann Apperthwaite. She's always been one of my best friends; that's
why I feel at liberty to abuse her--and I always will abuse her when I
think how she treated poor David Beasley."
"How did she treat him?"
"Threw him over out of a clear sky one night, that's all. Just sent him
home and broke his heart; that is, it would have been broken if he'd had
any kind of disposition except the one the Lord blessed him with--just
all optimism and cheerfulness and make-the-best-of-it-ness! He's never
cared for anybody else, and I guess he never will."
"What did she do it for?"
"NOTHING!" My cousin shot the indignant word from her lips.
"Nothing in the wide WORLD!"
"But there must have been--"
"Listen to me," she interrupted, "and tell me if you ever heard anything
queerer in your life. They'd been engaged--Heaven knows how
long--over two years; probably nearer three--and always she kept
putting it off; wouldn't begin to get ready, wouldn't set a day for the
wedding. Then Mr. Apperthwaite died, and left her and her mother
stranded high and dry with nothing to live on. David had everything in
the world to give her--and STILL she wouldn't! And then, one day, she
came up here and told me she'd broken it off. Said she couldn't stand it
to be engaged to David Beasley another minute!"
"But why?"
"Because"--my cousin's tone was shrill with her despair of expressing
the satire she would have put into it--"because, she said he was a man
of no imagination!"
"She still says so," I remarked, thoughtfully.
"Then it's time she got a little imagination herself!" snapped my
companion. "David Beasley's the quietest man God has made, but
everybody knows what he IS! There are some rare people in this world
that aren't all TALK; there are some still rarer ones that scarcely ever
talk at all--and David Beasley's one of them. I don't know whether it's
because he can't talk, or if he can and hates to; I only know he doesn't.
And I'm glad of it, and thank the Lord he's put a few like that into this

talky world! David Beasley's smile is better than acres of other people's
talk. My Providence! Wouldn't anybody, just to look at him, know that
he does better than talk? He THINKS! The trouble with Ann
Apperthwaite was that she was too young to see it. She was so full of
novels and poetry and dreaminess and highfalutin nonsense she
couldn't see ANYTHING as it really was. She'd study her mirror, and
see such a heroine of romance there that she just couldn't bear to have a
fiance who hadn't any chance of turning out to be the crown-prince of
Kenosha in disguise! At the very least, to suit HER he'd have had to
wear a 'well-trimmed Vandyke' and coo sonnets in the gloaming, or
read On a Balcony to her by a red lamp.
"Poor David! Outside of his law-books, I don't believe he's ever read
anything but Robinson Crusoe and the Bible and Mark Twain. Oh, you
should have