The Battle Ground | Page 8

wonderful talent for preserving," she
murmured plaintively. "It makes me regret my own uselessness."
"Uselessness!" warmly protested the Governor. "My dear Miss Lydia,
your mere existence is a blessing to mankind. A lovely woman is never
useless, eh, Brother Bill?"
Mr. Bill, a stout and bashful gentleman, who never wasted words,
merely bowed over his plate, and went on with his supper. There was a
theory in the family--a theory romantic old Miss Lydia still hung hard
by--that Mr. Bill's peculiar apathy was of a sentimental origin. Nearly
thirty years before he had made a series of mild advances to his second
cousin, Virginia Ambler--and her early death before their polite vows
were plighted had, in the eyes of his friends, doomed the morose Mr.
Bill to the position of a perpetual mourner.

Now, as he shook his head and helped himself to chicken, Miss Lydia
sighed in sympathy.
"I am afraid Mr. Bill must find us very flippant," she offered as a gentle
reproof to the Governor.
Mr. Bill started and cast a frightened glance across the table. Thirty
years are not as a day, and, after all, his emotion had been hardly more
than he would have felt for a prize perch that had wriggled from his
line into the stream. The perch, indeed, would have represented more
appropriately the passion of his life--though a lukewarm lover, he was
an ardent angler.
"Ah, Brother Bill understands us," cheerfully interposed the Governor.
His keen eyes had noted Mr. Bill's alarm as they noted the emptiness of
Miss Pussy's cup. "By the way, Julia," he went on with a change of the
subject, "Major Lightfoot found Betty in the road and brought her home.
The little rogue had run away."
Mrs. Ambler filled Miss Pussy's cup and pressed Mr. Bill to take a slice
of Sally Lunn. "The Major is so broken that it saddens me," she said,
when these offices of hostess were accomplished. "He has never been
himself since his daughter ran away, and that was--dear me, why that
was twelve years ago next Christmas. It was on Christmas Eve, you
remember, he came to tell us. The house was dressed in evergreens, and
Uncle Patrick was making punch."
"Poor Patrick was a hard drinker," sighed Miss Lydia; "but he was a
citizen of the world, my dear."
"Yes, yes, I perfectly recall the evening," said the Governor,
thoughtfully. "The young people were just forming for a reel and you
and I were of them, my dear,--it was the year, I remember, that the
mistletoe was brought home in a cart,--when the door opened and in
came the Major. 'Jane has run away with that dirty scamp Montjoy,' he
said, and was out again and on his horse before we caught the words.
He rode like a madman that night. I can see him now, splashing
through the mud with Big Abel after him."

Betty came running in with smiling eyes, and fluttered into her seat. "I
got here before the waffles," she cried. "Mammy said I wouldn't. Uncle
Shadrach, I got here before you!"
"Dat's so, honey," responded Uncle Shadrach from behind the
Governor's chair. He was so like his master--commanding port,
elaborate shirt-front, and high white stock--that the Major, in a moment
of merry-making, had once dubbed him "the Governor's silhouette."
"Say your grace, dear," remonstrated Miss Lydia, as the child shook out
her napkin. "It's always proper to offer thanks standing, you know. I
remember your great-grandmother telling me that once when she dined
at the White House, when her father was in Congress, the President
forgot to say grace, and made them all get up again after they were
seated. Now, for what are we about--"
"Oh, papa thanked for me," cried Betty. "Didn't you, papa?"
The Governor smiled; but catching his wife's eyes, he quickly forced
his benign features into a frowning mask.
"Do as your aunt tells you, Betty," said Mrs. Ambler, and Betty got up
and said grace, while Virginia took the brownest waffle. When the
thanksgiving was ended, she turned indignantly upon her sister. "That
was just a sly, mean trick!" she cried in a flash of temper. "You saw my
eye on that waffle!"
"My dear, my dear," murmured Miss Lydia.
"She's des an out'n out fire bran', dat's w'at she is," said Uncle
Shadrach.
"Well, the Lord oughtn't to have let her take it just as I was thanking
Him for it!" sobbed Betty, and she burst into tears and left the table,
upsetting Mr. Bill's coffee cup as she went by.
The Governor looked gravely after her. "I'm afraid the child is really
getting spoiled, Julia," he mildly suggested.

"She's getting a--a vixenish," declared Mr. Bill, mopping his expansive
white waistcoat.
"You des better lemme go atter a twig er