Hooking Watermelons | Page 5

At last the music was succeeded
by the baying of a dog in some distant farmyard, and then, ere the
ocean of silence had fairly smoothed its surface over that, a horse began
to kick violently in a neighboring barn. Some time after, a man
chopped some kindlings in a shed a couple of lots off. 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.