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But Ethie had decided upon her role without consulting him, and so he walked over piles of ancient-looking finery and got his boots tangled in the golden wig which Ethie had hunted up, and told her he should be glad when it was over, and wished mentally that it might be Lent the year around, and was persuaded into saying he would go to the party himself, not as a masker, but in his own proper person as Richard Markham, the grave and dignified Judge whom the people respected so highly.
"You don't like the pesky thing on your head, making you look so like a scarecrow, do you?" he said gently, as with a jerk he broke the strings and then threw the discarded cap upon the floor. Ethie seemed to know him for a moment, and, "Kiss me, Andy," came feebly from her lips.
Markham's vulgarity, the stocking question would have settled the matter with her. "Poor Ethie!" she sighed, as she drew her seat to the fire, and asked what they ought to do. Aunt Barbara did not know.
If such was his wish, she was content, she said, and Frank Van Buren, who could not detect the air of superb scorn which breathed in every line of that letter, felt somehow aggrieved that "Ethie should take it so easy," and relieved too, that with her he should have no trouble, as he had anticipated.
You did wrong, Ethie, to go and stay so long. Richard did not deserve it." It was the first word of censure Aunt Barbara had uttered, and Ethelyn felt it keenly, as was evinced by her quivering lip and trembling voice, as she said: "Don't auntie, don't you scold me, please. I can bear it better from anyone else. I want you to stand by me. I know I was hasty and did very wrong.
He was greatly honored and esteemed, I hear from a friend who spent a few weeks at Des Moines, and everybody was so sorry for him." "Did they talk of me?" Ethie asked, repenting the next minute that she had been at all curious in the matter. Mrs. Van Buren, bent upon annoying her, replied, "Some, yes; and knowing the governor as they did, it is natural they should blame you more than him.
She heard a great deal that afternoon, for the ladies at the end of the hall did not speak very low, and when at last she was released from her bandages and had made her afternoon toilet, she hastened round to Miss Bigelow's to report what she had heard. Tired with her vigils of the previous night, Ethie was lying down, but she bade Mrs.
She'll come back again, Ethie will. I feel it, I feel it, I know it, I shall pray for her every hour until she comes. Prayer will reach her where nothing else can find her. Poor Dick, I am so sorry. Don't look at me so; you scare me. Try to cry; try to make a fuss; try to do anything rather than that dreadful look.
Markham did not quarrel with her, but she thought about her all the time, and fretted over her, and remembered the letter she had written about her ways and her being good to Ethie, and wondered what she was there for, and why she did not go home, and asked her what time they generally cleaned house in Chicopee, and if she dared trust her cleaning with Betty.
Tophevie's fan brought him back to consciousness, and he was almost guilty of a sigh as the log cabin faded from his vision, with the Plymptons and Abigail Jones, leaving instead that heated ballroom, with its trained orchestra, its bevy of fair young girls, its score of white-kidded dandies with wasp-like waists and perfumed locks, and Ethie smiling in their midst.
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