"Who's Sophy?" asked Jack seriously. He had never known the name of his Dulcinea. In the dim epistolatory region of sentiment she had existed only as "The Blue Moselle," so called from the cerulean hue of her favorite raiment, and occasionally in moments of familiar endearment, as "Mosey."
"Come, now, pretend you don't know, will you," said Olly, evading the kiss which Jack always had ready for childhood. "If I was her, I wouldn't have anything to say to you after that!" she added, with that ostentatious chivalry of her sex toward each other, in the presence of their common enemy. "Why, she saw you from the window when you first came this morning, when you went back again and shaved off your mustache; she knew you. And you don't know her! It's mean, ain't it? they'll grow again, won't they?" Miss Olly referred to the mustaches and not the affections!
Jack was astonished and alarmed. In his anxiety to evade or placate the duenna, he had never thought of her charge—his sweetheart. Here was a dilemma!
"Oh yes!" said Jack hastily, with a well simulated expression of arch affection, "Sophy, of course, that's my little game! But I've got a note for you too, my dear," and he handed Olly the few lines that Gabriel had hastily scrawled. He watched her keenly, almost breathlessly, as she read them. To his utter bewilderment she laid the note down indifferently and said, "That's like Gabe, the old simpleton!"
"But you're goin' to do what he says," asked Mr. Hamlin, "ain't you?"
"No," said Olly, promptly, "I ain't! Why, Lord! Mr. Hamlin, you don't know that man; why, he does this sort o' thing every week!" Perceiving Jack stare, she went on, "Why, only last week, didn't he send to me to meet him out on the corner of the street, and he my own brother, instead o' comin' here, ez he hez a right to do. Go to him at Wingdam? No! ketch me!"
"But suppose he can't come," continued Mr. Hamlin.
"Why can't he come? I tell you, it's just foolishness and the meanest kind o' bashfulness. Jes' because they happened to be a young lady here from San Francisco, Rosey Ringround, who was a little took with the ole fool. If he could come to Wingdam, why couldn't he come here,—that's what I want to know?"
"Will you let me see that note?" asked Hamlin.
Olly handed him the note, with the remark, "He don't spell well and he won't let me teach him—the old Muggins!"
Hamlin took it and read as follows:
Dear Olly—If it don't run a fowl uv yer lessings and the Maddam's willin' and the young laddies, Brother Gab's waitin' fer ye at Wingdam, so no more from your affeshtunate brother. Gab.
Mr. Hamlin was in a quandary. It never had been a part of his plan to let Olly know the importance of her journey. Mr. Maxwell's injunctions to bring her "quietly," his own fears of an outburst that might bring a questioning and sympathetic school about his ears, and lastly and not the least potently, his own desire to enjoy Olly's company in the long ride to One Horse Gulch without the preoccupation of grief, with his own comfortable conviction that he could eventually bring Gabriel out of this "fix" without Olly knowing anything about it, all this forbade his telling her the truth. But here was a coil he had not thought of. Howbeit, Mr. Hamlin was quick at expedients. "Then you think Sophy can see me," he added, with a sudden interest.
"Of course she will!" said Olly, archly. "It was right smart in you to get acquainted with Gabe and set him up to writing that; though its just like him. He's that soft that anybody could get round him. But there she is now, Mr. Hamlin; that's her step on the stairs. And I don't suppose you two hez any need o' me now." And she slipped out of the room, as demurely as she had entered, at the same moment that a tall, slim and somewhat sensational young lady in blue came flying in.
I can, in justice to Mr. Hamlin, whose secrets have been perhaps needlessly violated in the progress of this story, do no less than pass over as sacred, and perhaps wholly irrelevant to the issue, the interview that took place between himself and Miss Sophy. That he succeeded in convincing that young woman of his unaltered loyalty, that he explained his long silence as the result of a torturing doubt of the permanence of her own affection, that his presence at that moment was the successful culmination of a long-matured and desperate plan to see her once more and learn the truth from her own lips, I am sure that no member of my own disgraceful sex will question, and I trust no member of a too fond and confiding sex will doubt. That some bitterness was felt by Mr. Hamlin, who was conscious of certain irregularities during this
Vol. XII.—13.
