"That's unjust!" I cried, really angry, "Aurelia is a fine name; and she may have a pet name, you know."
"Only one Miss Blunt with a pet name for little Willie!" said he. "My little Dolly!"
But I tied him down with a promise that before he saw me again he'd call on Aurelia. When I saw him next he looked guilty, and said he had found her out when he called. I scolded him cruelly, and made him promise again. The fact was that when he called I couldn't find it in my heart to sink to the prosaic level of Miss Aurelia Blunt. I had had the sweetest, most delicious courtship that any girl ever had, up to this time, and I was afraid of spoiling it all. I was afraid sort of on general principles, you know, and so was "out." And after he went away I stole down into the park in my electric runabout and talked to Mr. Lincoln about it. He seemed to know. When I went away, I left a little kiss on the monument.
Billy was perfectly cringing that next day when he had to confess that he had failed on what he called "this Aurelia proposition." He begged to be let off.
"You see," said he, "she may give me a frigid reception, and take offense at my delay in presenting this letter. Amelia may have written her, and she may be furious. There may be some sort of social statute of limitations on letters of introduction, and the thing may have run out, so that I'll be ejected by the servants, dearie. And, anyhow, it will place me in an equivocal position with Mr. Blunt – my coming to him as a tramp, and holding so very lightly the valuable social advantage of an acquaintance with the family. He won't remember that he jumped on me with both feet and gave me six months on bread and water. It – it may queer me in the business."
I here drew myself up to my full height, and froze him as I have seldom done.
"Mr. Helmerston," said I, "I have indicated to you a fact which I had supposed might have some weight with you as against sordid and merely prudential considerations – I mean my preferences in this matter. It seems, however, that – that you don't care the least little bit what I want, and I just know that you don't – care for me at all as you say you do; and I'm going home at once!"
Well, he was so abject, and so sorry to have given me pain, that I wanted to hug him, but I didn't.
Oh, I almost neglected to say that all our behavior had been of the most proper and self-contained sort. I would almost be willing to have Miss Featherstonehaugh at St. Cecilia's use a kinetoscope picture of all our meetings in marking me in deportment. Of course, conversations in parks and at concerts do not lend themselves to transports very well, and the kinetoscopes do not reproduce what is said, do they? Or the way one feels when one is grinding into the dust, in that manner, the most splendid fellow in the whole terrestrial and stellar universe.
"I'll go, by George!" he vowed. "And I'll sit on Aurelia's doorstep without eating or drinking until she comes home and kicks me down the stairs!" I was wondering as I went home how soon he would come; but I was astonished to learn that Mr. Helmerston was in my reception-room.
"Hi informed 'im," said the footman, "that you would 'ardly be 'ome within a reasonable time of waiting; but 'e said 'e would remain until you came, Miss, nevertheless."
I went down to him just as I was, in my simple piqué dress, wearing the violets he had given me. "Mr. Helmerston," said I, "I must apologize for the difficulty I have given you in obtaining the very slight boon of meeting me, and say how good you are to come again – and wait. Any friend of dearest Amelia's, not to mention her cousin, is – "
He had stood in a state of positive paralysis until now.
"Dolly! Dolly! Dearest, dearest Dolly!" he cried, coming up to me and taking – and doing what he hadn't had a chance to do before. "Oh, my darling, are you here?"
After quite a while he started up as if he had forgotten something.
"What is it?" said I. "There isn't a promenader or a policeman this side of the park, sweetheart!"
"No," he answered after another interval – for I hadn't called him anything like that before – "but I was thinking that – that Aurelia – is a long time in coming home."
"Why, don't you know yet, you goosey," said I. "I'm Aurelia!"
And this brings me to the point where dalliance must cease – most of the time – while the drama takes on the darker tinge given it by Pa's cruel obstinacy, and the misdeeds of the Pruntys – whom I should have brought on in the first act, somehow, on a darkened stage, conspiring across it over a black bottle, and once in a while getting up to peek up and down the flies, meanwhile uttering the villain's sibilant "Sh!" I don't suppose it is artistic, from the Augustus Thomas viewpoint, but I wanted the honeyed sweets of this courtship of mine without a tang of bitter; and, honestly now, isn't it a lovely little plot for a love-drama?
"Gee!" exclaimed the Hired Man. "I was afraid you was through!"
"I am," said the Bride softly, "for to-night. If you'll excuse me now. Maybe I'll tell the rest of it at the next camp – if you want me to."
"I assure you," said the Professor, "that your tale does credit to your teachers in elocution."
"We all thank you," said the Artist, "for what we've had – and won't you continue at the next session – Scheherazade?"
"I'll see," said she. "Billy! Where are you!"
"I have mysteriously disappeared," replied the Groom from behind the tree. "Come hunt me!"
CHAPTER III
At the behest of Aconite, the party refrained from expressions of more than mild interest at the Norris Basin. Aconite assured them that they ought to save their strong expressions for things farther on. The Poet wrote some verses for the purpose of creating a legend to account for the fact that the Monarch Geyser ceased to spout some ten years ago. But when he came to the Growler, and the Hurricane, and the new Roaring Holes, which are really gigantic steam whistles, he dismounted from his Pegasus and threaded his way through the dead forest – killed by escaping steam – in a trance of wonder. But Aconite's advice to economize language until the Lower Geyser Basin should be reached was followed so far as superlatives were concerned. Night found them scattered, and it was only when they took the road once more that the party was whole again. The Artist stopped the surrey at the Gibbon Paint Pots so that he might use some of their bubbling sediment as a pigment with which to paint a souvenir picture for each of the party. Cañons, boiling springs and waterfalls – rocks, mountains, wild beauty on every hand – all these they were assured were inconsiderable parts of the prelude to the marvels awaiting them at the next halt. But when they came to the crossing of Nez Percè Creek, the Bride expressed a desire to wait, to stop, to rest her eyes and quiet her spirits before anything more striking should be imposed upon her powers of observation.
"I fell like Olger the Dane and King Desiderio, when they watched on the tower for Charlemagne; and if we go on, I shall, like Olger, fall 'as one dead at Desiderio's feet!'"
The Poet looked in the Bride's eyes, and nodded sympathetically. Mr. Driscoll pondered the mysteries of the Bride's statement for a while, and threw down his lines.
"If that's the way the Bride feels," said he, "we'll stop here and grub our systems up a little."
"The champion hard-luck story of this or any other age," said the Colonel, as they lighted their pipes after dinner, "was enacted right up this creek in that Nez Percè uprising wherein I fought and bled and died."
"More matter for myths," said the Artist. "Let's have it, e'en though it be as dolorous as the tale of the Patient Griselda."
"I don't recall more of Griselda's story," said the Colonel, "than that she was given the worst of it by her husband, the king. But this Nez Percè Creek story isn't any tale of the perfidy of our nearest and dearest, but of things just unanimously breaking bad for a man from Radersburg, Mr. Cowan. He and his wife and some friends were camped down here a couple of miles at the Lower Geyser Basin, right close by the Fountain Geyser, just beyond the hotel – only there wasn't any hotel yet for thirty years. Chief Joseph and his Nez Percès came through trying to get away from the United States. They picked up the Cowan party, and brought them right along where we now are,