Jeff Briggss Love Story | Page 7

same breath and tone,
"especially when transient customers is waiting for their licker, and
Yuba Bill hammerin' on the counter with his glass; and yer ye stand,
Jeff, never even takin' up that wet bar-skin--enuff to give that young
woman her death."
Stammering out an incoherent apology, addressed vaguely to the
occupants of the room, but looking toward the languid goddess on the
sofa, Jeff seized the bear-skin and backed out the door. Then he flew to
his room with it, and then returned to the bar-room; but the impatient
William of Yuba had characteristically helped himself and gone off to
the stable. Then Jeff stole into the hall and halted before the closed
door of the sitting-room. A bold idea of going in again, as became a
landlord of the "Half-way House," with an inquiry if they wished
anything further, had seized him, but the remembrance that he had
always meekly allowed that duty to devolve upon his aunt, and that she
would probably resent it with scriptural authority and bring him to
shame again, stayed his timid knuckles at the door. In this hesitation he
stumbled upon his aunt coming down the stairs with an armful of
blankets and pillows, attended by their small Indian servant, staggering
under a mattress.
"Is everything all right, aunty?"
"Ye kin be thankful to the Lord, Jeff Briggs, that this didn't happen last
week when I was down on my back with rheumatiz. But ye're never
grateful."
"The young lady--is SHE comfortable?" said Jeff, accepting his aunt's
previous remark as confirmatory.
"Ez well ez enny critter marked by the finger of the Lord with gallopin'

consumption kin be, I reckon. And she, ez oughter be putting off airthly
vanities, askin' for a lookin'-glass! And you! trapesin' through the hall
with her on yer shoulder, and dancin' and jouncin' her up and down ez
if it was a ball-room!" A guilty recollection that he had skipped with
her through the passage struck him with remorse as his aunt went on:
"It's a mercy that betwixt you and the wet bar-skin she ain't got her
deth!"
"Don't ye think, aunty," stammered Jeff, "that--that--my bein' the
landlord, yer know, it would be the square thing--just out o' respect, ye
know--for me to drop in thar and ask 'em if thar's anythin' they
wanted?"
His aunt stopped, and resignedly put down the pillows. "Sarah," she
said meekly to the handmaiden, "ye kin leave go that mattress. Yer's
Mr. Jefferson thinks we ain't good enough to make the beds for them
two city women folks, and he allows he'll do it himself!"
"No, no! aunty!" began the horrified Jeff; but failing to placate his
injured relative, took safety in flight.
Once safe in his own room his eye fell on the bear-skin. It certainly
WAS wet. Perhaps he had been careless--perhaps he had imperiled her
life! His cheeks flushed as he threw it hastily in the corner. Something
fell from it to the floor. Jeff picked it up and held it to the light. It was a
small, a very small, lady's slipper. Holding it within the palm of his
hand as if it had been some delicate flower which the pressure of a
finger might crush, he strode to the door, but stopped. Should he give it
to his aunt? Even if she overlooked this evident proof of HIS
carelessness, what would she think of the young lady's? Ought
he--seductive thought!-- go downstairs again, knock at the door, and
give it to its fair owner, with the apology he was longing to make?
Then he remembered that he had but a few moments before been
dismissed from the room very much as if he were the original
proprietor of the skin he had taken. Perhaps they were right; perhaps he
WAS only a foolish clumsy animal! Yet SHE had thanked him--and
had said in her sweet childlike voice, "It is a great thing to be strong; a
greater thing to be strong and gentle." He was strong; strong men had

said so. He did not know if he was gentle too. Had she meant THAT,
when she turned her strangely soft dark eyes upon him? For some
moments he held the slipper hesitatingly in his hand, then he opened
his trunk, and disposing various articles around it as if it were some
fragile, perishable object, laid it carefully therein.
This done, he drew off his boots, and rolling himself in his blanket, lay
down upon the bed. He did not open his novel--he did not follow up the
exciting love episode of his favorite hero--so ungrateful is humanity to
us poor romancers, in the first stages of their real passion. Ah, me! 'tis
the jongleurs and troubadours they want then, not us! When Master
Slender, sick for sweet