E-text prepared by Roger Frank, Brownfox,
and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
()
"Better Than Life," "A Life's Mistake," "Once in a Life,""'Twas Love's Fault," etc.
PUBLISHERS :: :: :: NEW YORK
1898
"Dick, how many are twenty-seven and eight?"
The girl looked up, with narrow eyes and puckered brow, from thebutcher's book, which she was laboriously "checking," at the boy wholeaned back on the window seat picking out a tune on a banjo.
"Thirty-nine," he replied lazily but promptly, without ceasing to peck,peck at the strings.
She nodded her thanks, and traveled slowly up the column, counting withthe end of her pencil and jotting down the result with a perplexed face.
They were brother and sister, Nell and Dick Lorton, and they made anextremely pretty picture in the sunny room. The boy was fair with thefairness of the pure Saxon; the girl was dark—dark hair with the sheenof silk in it, dark, straight brows that looked all the darker for theclear gray of the eyes which shone like stars beneath them. But the eyeswere almost violet at this moment with the intensity of her mentaleffort, and presently, as she raised them, they flashed with a mixtureof irritation and sweet indignation.
"Dick, if you don't put that banjo down I'll come over and make you.It's bad enough at most times; but the 'Old Folks at Home' on onestring, while I'm trying to check this wretched book, is intolerable,and not to be endured. Put it down, Dick, or I'll come over and smashboth of you!"
He struck a chord, an exasperating chord, and then resumed the moreexasperating peck, peck.
"'Twas ever thus," he said, addressing the ceiling with sad reproach."Women are born ungrateful, and continue so. Here am I, wasting thisdelightful afternoon in attempting to soothe a sister's savage breast bysweet strains of heavenly music, and she——"
With a laugh, she sprang from her seat and went for him. There was ashort and fierce struggle, during which the banjo was whirled hither andthither; then he got her down on the floor, sat upon her, anddeliberately resumed pecking out the "Old Folks at Home."
"Let me get up, Dick! Let me get up this instant!" she cried indignantlyand breathlessly. "The man's waiting for the book. Dick, do you hear?I'll pinch you—I'll crumple your collar! I'll burn that beast of a[Pg 6]banjo directly you've gone out. Dick, I'm sure you're hurting meseriously. Di-ck! I've got a pain! Oh, you wait until you've gone out!I'll light the fire with that thing! Get up!"
Without a change of countenance, as if he were deaf to her entreatiesand threats, he tuned up the banjo, and played a breakdown.
"Comfortable, Nell? That's right. Always strive for contentment,whatever your lot may be. At present your lot is to provide me with anice, springy seat, and it will so continue to be until you promise—onyour honor, mind—that you will not lay a destructive hand on thissweetest of instruments."
"Oh, let me get up, Dick!"
"Until I receive that promise, and an abject apology, it is a case ofj'y suis, j'y reste, my child," he responded blandly.
She panted and struggled for a moment or two, then she