Hooking Watermelons | Page 5

Gradually, however, the noises ceased like the oft-returning yet steadily falling ebb of the tide, and Arthur experienced how many degrees there are of silence, each more utter than the last, so that the final and absolute degree must be something to which the utmost quiet obtainable on earth is uproar. One by one the lights went out in the houses, till the only ones left were in the windows of the Seminary, visible over the tree-tops a quarter of a mile away.
"The girls keep late hours," thought Arthur. And from that he fell to thinking of Lina Maynard and the careless, almost insolent, grace of her manner, and that indifferent yet penetrating glance of hers. Where did she come from? Probably from California, or the far West; he had heard that the girls out there were of a bolder, more unconventional type than at the East. What a pity she did not fancy Amy!
What was that moving across the melon-patch? He reached for his gun. It was only a cat, though, after all. The slight noise in the corn-patch attracted the animal's attention, and it came across and poked its head into the opening where Arthur sat. As the creature saw him, its start of surprise would have shattered the nervous system of anything but a cat. It stood half thrown back on its haunches, its ears flattened, its eyes glaring in a petrifaction of amazement. Arthur sat motionless as marble, laughing inwardly. For full two minutes the two stared at each other without moving a muscle, and then, without relaxing its tense attitude, the cat by almost imperceptible degrees withdrew one paw and then another, and, thus backing out of the corn-patch, turned around when at a safe distance and slunk away.
A few minutes later a dog, that enthusiast in perfumes, jumped through the fence and trotted across the melon-patch, his nose to the ground, making a collection of evening smells. Arthur expected nothing but that he would scent his neighborhood, find him out, and set up a barking. But, chancing to strike the cat's trail, off went the dog on a full run with nose to the ground.
Such were the varying humors of the night. After the episode of the dog, feeling a little chilly, Arthur enveloped himself in the tattered old overcoat and must have dropped into a nap. Suddenly he awoke. Within ten feet of him, just in the act of stooping over a huge melon, was a woman's figure. He saw the face clearly as she rose. Immortal gods! it was--But I am anticipating.
The discipline at Westville Seminary had been shockingly lax since the long illness of the principal had left the easy-going first assistant teacher at the head of affairs. The girls ran all over the rules,--had private theatricals, suppers, and games of all sorts in their rooms at all hours of day or night. In the course of the evening whose events in another sphere of life have been narrated, several girls called at Lina Maynard's room to notify her of the "spread" at Nell Barber's, No. 49, at eleven o'clock. They found her sitting in a low rocking-chair, with an open letter in her hand and a very pensive, discontented expression of countenance.
"Does he press for an answer, Lina? We 're just in time to advise you," cried Nell Barber.
"Don't say Yes unless his eyes are blue," drawled a brunette.
"Unless they 're black, you mean," sharply amended a bright blonde.
"Make him elope with you," suggested Nell, "It will be such fun to have a real rope-ladder elopement at the Seminary, and we'll all sit up and see it."
"Oh, do, do, Lina!" chorused the others.
But Lina, apparently too much chagrined at something to be in a mood for jests, sat with her eyebrows petulantly contracted, her feet thrust out, and the hand holding the letter hanging by her side, her whole attitude indicating despondence.
"Still pensive! It can't be he's faithless!" exclaimed Nell.
"Faithless to those eyes! I should say not," cried the blonde, whom Lina called her sweetheart, and who claimed to be "engaged" to her according to boarding-school fashion.
"Don't mind him, dear," she went on, throwing herself on the floor, clasping her hands about Lina's knee, and leaning her cheek on it. "You make me so jealous. Have n't you got me, and ain't I enough?"
"Plenty enough, dear," said Lina, stroking her cheek. "This is only from my brother Charley."
"The one at Watertown 'Sem.'?"
"Yes," said Lina; "and oh, girls," she went on, with gloomy energy, "we don't have any good times at all compared with those boys. They do really wicked things, hook apples, and carry off people's gates and signs, and screw up tutors' doors in the night, and have fights with what he calls 'townies,'--I don't know exactly what they