From Jest to Earnest | Page 5

city gossip were in order. The quiet flow and ripple of small
talk was suddenly interrupted by her petulant exclamation:
"Oh! I forgot to tell you a bit of unpleasant news. Mother, without
consulting me, has invited a poor and poky cousin of ours to spend the
holidays with us also. He is from the West, green as a gooseberry, and,
what's far worse, he's studying for the ministry, and no doubt will want
to preach at us all the time. I don't know when I've been more provoked,
but mother said it was too late, she had invited him, and he was coming.
I fear he will be a dreadful restraint, a sort of wet blanket on all our fun,
for one must be polite, you know, in one's own house."
"I am under no special obligation to be polite," laughed Lottie. "Mark
my words. I will shock your pious and proper cousin till he is ready to
write a book on total depravity. It will be good sport till I am tired of
it."
"No, Lottie, you shall not give such a false impression of yourself, even
in a joke," said Bel. "I will tell him, if he can't see, that you are not a
sinner above all in Galilee."
"No, my matter-of-fact cousin, you shall not tell him anything. Why
should I care what he thinks? Already in fancy I see his face elongate,
and his eyes dilate, in holy horror at my wickedness. If there is one
thing I love to do more than another, it is to shock your eminently good
and proper people."

"Why, Miss Lottie," chuckled De Forrest, "to hear you talk, one would
think you were past praying for."
"No, not till I am married."
"In that sense I am always at my devotions."
"Perhaps you had better read the fable of the Frogs and King Stork."
"Thank you. I had never dared to hope that you regarded me as good
enough to eat."
"No, only to peck at."
"But listen to Miss Addie's proposal. If I mistake not, there is no end of
fun in it," said Mr. Harcourt.
"I've thought of something better than shocking him. These Western
men are not easily shocked. They see all kinds out there. What I
suggest would be a better joke, and give us all a chance to enjoy the
sport. Suppose, Lottie, you assume to be the good and pious one of our
party, and in this character form his acquaintance. He will soon be
talking religion to you, and like enough, making love and wanting you
to go with him as a missionary to the Cannibal Islands."
"If you go, O that I were king of them!" broke in De Forrest.
"You mean, you would have Lottie for dinner, I suppose," continued
Miss Marchmont. "She would be served up properly as a tart."
"No," he retorted, "as sauce piquante. She could make a long life a
highly seasoned feast."
"You evidently are an Epicurean philosopher; all your thoughts seem to
run on eating," said Lottie, sharply.
"But what say you to my suggestion?" asked Addie Marchmont. "I
think it would be one of the best practical jokes I ever knew. The very
thought of such an incorrigible witch as you palming yourself off as a
demure Puritan maiden is the climax of comical absurdity."
Even Lottie joined heartily in the general laugh at her expense, and the
preposterous imposition she was asked to attempt, but said dubiously:
"I fear I could not act successfully the role of Puritan maiden, when I
have always been in reality just the opposite. And yet it would be grand
sport to make the attempt, and a decided novelty. But surely your
cousin cannot be so verdant but that he would soon see through our
mischief and detect the fraud."
"Well," replied Addie, "Frank, as I remember him, is a singularly
unsuspicious mortal. Even as a boy his head was always in the clouds.

He has not seen much society save that of his mother and an old-maid
sister. Moreover, he is so dreadfully pious, and life with him such a
solemn thing, that unless we are very bungling he will not even
imagine such frivolity, as he would call it, until the truth is forced upon
him. Then there will be a scene. You will shock him then, Lottie, to
your heart's content. He will probably tell you that he is dumbfounded,
and that he would not believe that a young woman in this Christian
land could trifle with such solemn realities,--that is, himself and his
feelings."
"But I don't think it would be quite right," protested Bel, feebly.
Mr. Harcourt lifted his eyebrows.
"Nonsense! Suppose it is not," said Lottie, impatiently.
"But, Addie," persisted Bel, "he will