Majorie Daw | Page 6

many of the ills of life to see her now and then
put out a small kid boot, which fits like a glove, and set herself going.

Who is she, and what is her name? Her name is Daw. Only daughter if
Mr. Richard W. Daw, ex-colonel and banker. Mother dead. One brother
at Harvard, elder brother killed at the battle of Fair Oaks, ten years ago.
Old, rich family, the Daws. This is the homestead, where father and
daughter pass eight months of the twelve; the rest of the year in
Baltimore and Washington. The New England winter too many for the
old gentleman. The daughter is called Marjorie--Marjorie Daw. Sounds
odd at first, doesn't it? But after you say it over to yourself half a dozen
times, you like it. There's a pleasing quaintness to it, something prim
and violet-like. Must be a nice sort of girl to be called Marjorie Daw.
I had mine host of The Pines in the witness-box last night, and drew the
foregoing testimony from him. He has charge of Mr. Daw's
vegetable-garden, and has known the family these thirty years. Of
course I shall make the acquaintance of my neighbors before many
days. It will be next to impossible for me not to meet Mr. Daw or Miss
Daw in some of my walks. The young lady has a favorite path to the
sea-beach. I shall intercept her some morning, and touch my hat to her.
Then the princess will bend her fair head to me with courteous surprise
not unmixed with haughtiness. Will snub me, in fact. All this for thy
sake, O Pasha of the Snapt Axle-tree!. . . How oddly things fall out!
Ten minutes ago I was called down to the parlor--you know the kind of
parlors in farm-houses on the coast, a sort of amphibious parlor, with
sea-shells on the mantel-piece and spruce branches in the
chimney-place--where I found my father and Mr. Daw doing the
antique polite to each other. He had come to pay his respects to his new
neighbors. Mr. Daw is a tall, slim gentleman of about fifty-five, with a
florid face and snow-white mustache and side-whiskers. Looks like Mr.
Dombey, or as Mr. Dombey would have looked if he had served a few
years in the British Army. Mr. Daw was a colonel in the late war,
commanding the regiment in which his son was a lieutenant. Plucky old
boy, backbone of New Hampshire granite. Before taking his leave, the
colonel delivered himself of an invitation as if he were issuing a
general order. Miss Daw has a few friends coming, at 4 p.m., to play
croquet on the lawn (parade-ground) and have tea (cold rations) on the
piazza. Will we honor them with our company? (or be sent to the
guard- house.) My father declines on the plea of ill-health. My father's
son bows with as much suavity as he knows, and accepts.

In my next I shall have something to tell you. I shall have seen the little
beauty face to face. I have a presentiment, Jack, that this Daw is a rara
avis! Keep up your spirits, my boy, until I write you another letter--and
send me along word how's your leg.
V.
EDWARD DELANEY TO JOHN FLEMMING.
August 13, 1872.
The party, my dear Jack, was as dreary as possible. A lieutenant of the
navy, the rector of the Episcopal Church at Stillwater, and a society
swell from Nahant. The lieutenant looked as if he had swallowed a
couple of his buttons, and found the bullion rather indigestible; the
rector was a pensive youth, of the daffydowndilly sort; and the swell
from Nahant was a very weak tidal wave indeed. The women were
much better, as they always are; the two Miss Kingsburys of
Philadelphia, staying at the Seashell House, two bright and engaging
girls. But Marjorie Daw!
The company broke up soon after tea, and I remained to smoke a cigar
with the colonel on the piazza. It was like seeing a picture, to see Miss
Marjorie hovering around the old soldier, and doing a hundred gracious
little things for him. She brought the cigars and lighted the tapers with
her own delicate fingers, in the most enchanting fashion. As we sat
there, she came and went in the summer twilight, and seemed, with her
white dress and pale gold hair, like some lovely phantom that had
sprung into existence out of the smokewreaths. If she had melted into
air, like the statue of Galatea in the play, I should have been more sorry
than surprised.
It was easy to perceive that the old colonel worshipped her and she him.
I think the relation between an elderly father and a daughter just
blooming into womanhood the most beautiful possible.