Under the Country Sky | Page 7

I should think it the strangest thing in the world that this should happen. Davidson is the minister of a great New York church where this Mr. Jefferson attends; and Davidson has never forgotten me, though he took the high road and I the low so soon after he left the seminary. Well, it will give us a fresh interest, my dear, for as long as it lasts."
Georgiana thought it would. She was up betimes next morning, to begin the sweeping and dusting and general turning upside down of the long-unused upper front room. In the course of her window washing, her shoulders enveloped in an old red shawl, she was vigorously hailed from below.
"Ship ahoy! Your name, cargo, and destination?"
Without turning she called merrily back: "The Jefferson, with a cargo of books, bound for the public!"
"What's that? I don't get you."
"Never mind. I'm too busy to be spoken by every passing ship."
"I'll be up," called the voice, and footsteps sounded upon the porch. The front door banged, the same ringing male voice was heard shouting a "Good-morning, sir!" and the owner of the voice came leaping up the stairs and burst into the room without ceremony. He advanced till he was close to the open window, and nodded through the glass at the window-washer, who sat on the sill with her upper body outside.
He was a fine specimen of youth and brawn and energy, the young man whom Georgiana had pointed out to her friends as one of her resources when it came to the good times they were so anxious to know of. His name was James Stuart, and he was a near neighbour of the manse. He was a college graduate of three years' longer standing than Georgiana, and he, like her, had returned to the country home and his father's farm because his aging parents could not spare him, and he was the only son whose lack of other ties left him free to care for them. He and this girl had been schoolmates and long-time friends--with interesting intervals of enmity during the earlier years--and were now sworn comrades, though they still quarrelled at times. It looked, after a minute, as if this would be one of those times.
"I didn't just get you," complained James Stuart through the window.
"Wait till I come in. I can't tell all the neighbours."
Georgiana polished off her last pane, pushed up the window and slipped into the room, quite unnecessarily assisted by Stuart.
"I can't understand," began the young man, eying with approval her blooming face, frost-stung and smooth in texture as the petals of a rose, "why you're washing the windows of a room that's always shut up."
"Jimps, if you were Mrs. Perkins next door I'd understand your consuming curiosity. As it is----"
"Going to have company?"
She shook her head.
"Then--what in thunder----"
"We're going to have a boarder, if you must know." Georgiana began to attack the inside of the window.
"A boarder! What sort?"
"A very good sort. He's a literary person with a book to write."
"Suffering cats! Not the man at the hotel?"
"I believe he was to exist at the hotel--if he could--for twenty-four hours," admitted Georgiana.
"But that man," objected Mr. James Stuart, "is a--why, he's--he doesn't look like that sort at all."
"What sort, if you please?"
"The literary. He looks like a--well, I took him for a professional man of some kind."
Georgiana laughed derisively. "Jimps! Isn't authorship a profession?"
"Well, I mean, you know, he doesn't look like an ink-slinger; he looks like some sort of a doer. He hasn't that dreamy expression. He sees with both eyes at once. In other words, he seems to be all there."
"Your idea of literary men is a disgrace to your education, Jimps. Think of the author-soldiers and author-engineers--and author-Presidents of the United States," she ended triumphantly.
"It doesn't matter," admitted Stuart. "The thing that does is that he's coming here. I can't say that appeals to me. How in time did he come to apply?" Georgiana told him briefly. Stuart looked gloomy. "That's all right," he said, "as long as he confines himself to being company for your father. But if he takes to being company for you--lookout!"
"Absurd! He's years older than I, and he said he would be working very hard. I shall see nothing of him except at the table. Heavens! don't grudge us anything that promises to relieve the monotony of our lives even a little bit."
Stuart whistled. "Monotony, eh? In spite of all my visits? All right. But I'd be just as well pleased if he wore skirts. And mind you--your Uncle Jimps is coming over evenings just as often as and a little oftener than if you didn't have this literary light burning on your hearthstone. See?"
He went away, his thick fair hair, uncapped, shining in the morning sunlight, his arm waving