Quaint Courtships | Page 9

upon poor Cyrus's common sense, the citadel trembled.
"Do you wish me to go into brain fever before your eyes, just from worry?" Gussie demanded. "You must go!"
"Well, maybe, perhaps, to-morrow--"
"To-night--to-night," said Augusta, faintly.
And Cyrus surrendered.
"Look under the bed before you go," Gussie murmured.
Cyrus looked. "Nobody there," he said, reassuringly; and went on tiptoe out of the darkened, cologne-scented room. But as he passed along the hall, and saw his father in his little cabin of a room, smoking placidly, and polishing his sextant with loving hands, Cyrus's heart reproached him.
"How's her head, Cy?" the Captain called out.
"Oh, better, I guess," Cyrus said.--("I'll be hanged if I speak to Dr. Lavendar!")
"That's good," said the Captain, beginning to hoist himself up out of his chair. "Going out? Hold hard, and I'll go 'long. I want to call on Mrs. North."
Cyrus stiffened. "Cold night, sir," he remonstrated.
"'Your granny was Murray, and wore a black nightcap!'" said the Captain; "you are getting delicate in your old age, Cy." He got up, and plunged into his coat, and tramped out, slamming the door heartily behind him; for which, later, poor Cyrus got the credit. "Where you bound?"
"Oh--down-street," said Cyrus, vaguely.
"Sealed orders?" said the Captain, with never a bit of curiosity in his big, kind voice; and Cyrus felt as small as he was. But when he left the old man at Mrs. North's door, he was uneasy again. Maybe Gussie was right! Women are keener about those things than men. And his uneasiness actually carried him to Dr. Lavendar's study, where he tried to appear at ease by patting Danny.
"What's the matter with you, Cyrus?" said Dr. Lavendar, looking at him over his spectacles. (Dr. Lavendar, in his wicked old heart, always wanted to call this young man Cipher; but, so far, grace had been given him to withstand temptation.) "What's wrong?" he said.
And Cyrus, somehow, told his troubles.
At first Dr. Lavendar chuckled; then he frowned. "Gussie put you up to this, Cy--_rus_?" he said.
"Well, my wife's a woman," Cyrus began, "and they're keener on such matters than men; and she said perhaps you would--would--"
_"What?"_ Dr. Lavendar rapped on the table with the bowl of his pipe, so loudly that Danny opened one eye. "Would what?"
"Well," Cyrus stammered, "you know, Dr. Lavendar, as Gussie says, 'there's no fo--'"
"You needn't finish it," Dr. Lavendar interrupted, dryly; "I've heard it before. Gussie didn't say anything about a young fool, did she?" Then he eyed Cyrus. "Or a middle-aged one? I've seen middle-aged fools that could beat us old fellows hollow."
"Oh, but Mrs. North is far beyond middle age," said Cyrus, earnestly.
Dr. Lavendar shook his head. "Well, well!" he said. "To think that Alfred Price should have such a--And yet he is as sensible a man as I know!"
"Until now," Cyrus amended. "But Gussie thought you'd better caution him. We don't want him, at his time of life, to make a mistake."
"It's much more to the point that I should caution you not to make a mistake," said Dr. Lavendar; and then he rapped on the table again, sharply. "The Captain has no such idea--unless Gussie has given it to him. Cyrus, my advice to you is to go home and tell your wife not to be a goose. I'll tell her, if you want me to?"
"Oh no, no!" said Cyrus, very much frightened. "I'm afraid you'd hurt her feelings."
"I'm afraid I should," said Dr. Lavendar.
He was so plainly out of temper that Cyrus finally slunk off, uncomforted and afraid to meet Gussie's eye, even under its bandage of a cologne-scented handkerchief.
However, he had to meet it, and he tried to make the best of his own humiliation by saying that Dr. Lavendar was shocked at such an idea. "He said father had always been so sensible; he didn't believe he would think of such a dreadful thing. And neither do I, Gussie, honestly," Cyrus said.
"But Mrs. North isn't sensible," Gussie protested, "and she'll--"
"Dr. Lavendar said 'there was no fool like a middle-aged fool,'" Cyrus agreed.
"Middle-aged! She's as old as Methuselah!"
"That's what I told him," said Cyrus.
By the end of April Old Chester smiled. How could it help it? Gussie worried so that she took frequent occasion to point out possibilities; and after the first gasp of incredulity, one could hear a faint echo of the giggles of forty-eight years before. Mary North heard it, and her heart burned within her.
"It's got to stop," she said to herself, passionately; "I must speak to his son."
But her throat was dry at the thought. It seemed as if it would kill her to speak to a man on such a subject--even to such a man as Cyrus. But, poor, shy tigress! to save her mother, what would she not do? In her pain and fright she said to Mrs. North