Part 21 (1/2)

”Gettin' 'toney' lately!” responded the intruder with a shrug, piling the packages up neatly in one corner and taking no heed of her expressed wish concerning them.

There was no response to this, and he resumed in a light and airy tone: ”Times has changed, Mrs. ----; eh? What _was_ it at Memphis and Helena, anyhow?”

This reference to the less aristocratic, though quite as respectable, vocation of a female camp-follower, though it caused the woman to change color rapidly, only brought from her the remark, ”I don't know what you mean, sir! I'll get even with whoever is responsible for this outrage”--here she glared around upon the company as if to ascertain whether any one present was guilty--”if it costs me a thousand dollars!”

The new-comer only smiled sarcastically at this and checked off his packages, concluding the operation by carefully counting two dozen red herrings, whose aroma was sufficient to announce their presence if he had not exhibited them at all; while members of the company looked about them and at each other as if for some explanation of the strange proceeding.

Finally, Mrs. Winslow, with a mighty effort to restrain herself, advanced and asked the young man if he would not please give her the name of the person to whom she was indebted for the articles.

He arose, and smiling blandly, remarked, ”You didn't used to be so particular about presents and such things!” Then he added with a meaning leer: ”At Helena and St. Louis, ye know, old girl!”

”Old girl!” the ladies all screamed. ”Why what _does_ this mean, Mrs.

Winslow?”

”Nothing, nothing!” she replied hastily; and then she hurried the too talkative young fellow away, and came back into the room with a show of gayety. But it broke up the little party, and soon after the ladies, with frigid excuses about not having very much time, and the gentlemen, with peculiar glances out of the corners of their eyes towards the woman who had been so familiarly termed an ”old girl,” took their departure, leaving Bristol, Fox, Mrs. Winslow and the melancholy pile of packages surmounted by aromatic red herrings in a state of solemn, moody silence.

Bristol was first to break the stillness, which he did by asking rather testily:

”You think Fox and I have had something to do with this, don't you?”

She looked at him a moment as if she would read his innermost thoughts, and replied: ”No, I don't! It comes from some of those strumpets of mediums, and I would give a good deal--a good deal, mind you, Bristol!--to know who it was. I'd--I'd----”

”What would you do?” asked Fox, putting her on her mettle for a savage answer.

”I would either burn them out, poison them, push them over the falls, or lie in wait for them and shoot them!”

Mrs. Winslow said this with as much sincerity and coolness as if giving an estimate on any ordinary business transaction, and evidently meant it.

”Oh, you wouldn't kill anybody, Winslow,” replied Fox airily.

”Wouldn't I, though, Mr. Fox?” she rejoined with the old glitter in her eyes and paleness upon her upper lip that had at an earlier period worried the Rev. Mr. Bland; ”wouldn't I? If you had fifty thousand dollars in your trunk, I would kill you, appropriate the money, cut you up and pack you in the trunk and s.h.i.+p you to the South--or some other hot climate by the next express!”

She was just as earnest about the remark as she would have been in carrying out the act; and after Fox had congratulated himself, both aloud cheerfully and in his own mind very thankfully, that neither his trunk, or for that matter his imagination, contained any such gorgeous sum, he went to his own room for the night, leaving the very excited Mrs. Winslow and the very calm Mr. Bristol to contemplate the groceries and each other.

After a few minutes' brown study she suddenly turned to her companion with: ”Bristol, you and I are pretty good friends, aren't we?”

”Certainly,” he replied.

”And haven't I always treated you pretty well?”

”Yes; with one exception.”

”What is that?”

”The sleep-walking you did in my room.”

”Oh, that's nothing, Bristol. Never happened but once, and won't occur again. Otherwise I have treated you pretty well, haven't I?”

Bristol felt compelled to confess that she had.