Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 2.djvu/328

320 will be so hard to y-you as my friends are to me."

With singular command over her tongue and temper, Mrs. Kinloch contented herself with hoping that he would find no difficulty in arranging matters with the lawyer, bade him good-morning, civilly, and shut the door behind him. But when he was gone, her anger, kept so well under control before, burst forth.

"Stuttering old fool!" she exclaimed, "to come here to badger me!—to throw up to me the wood he cut, or the apples he brought me!—as though Mr. Kinloch hadn't paid that ten times over! He'll find how it is before long."

"What's the matter?" asked Mildred, meeting her step-mother in the hall, and noticing her flushed cheek, her swelling veins, and contorted brows.

"Why, nothing, but a talk with Uncle Ralph, who has been rather saucy."

"Saucy? Uncle Ralph saucy? Why, he is the most kindly man in the world,—sometimes hasty, but always well-mannered. I don't see how he could be saucy."

"I advise you not to stand up for him against your mother."

"I shouldn't defend him in anything wrong; but I think there must be some misunderstanding."

"He is like Mark, I suppose, always perfect in your eyes."

This was the first time since Mr. Kinloch's death that the step-mother had ever alluded to the fondness which had existed between Mark and Mildred as school-children, and her eyes were bent upon the girl eagerly. It was as though she had knocked at the door of her heart, and waited for its opening to look into the secret recesses. A quick flush suffused Mildred's face and neck.

"You are unkind, mother," she said; for the glance was sharper than the words; and then, bursting into tears, she went to her room.

"So it has come to this!" said Mrs. Kinloch to herself. "Well, I did not begin at all too soon."

She walked through the hall to the back piazza. She heard voices from beyond the shrubbery that bordered the grass-plot where the clothes were hung on lines to dry. Lucy, the maid, evidently was there, for one; indeed, by shifting her position so as to look through an opening in the bushes, Mrs. Kinloch could see the girl; but she was not busy with her clothes-basket. An arm was bent around her plump and graceful figure. The next instant, as Mrs. Kinloch saw by standing on tiptoe, two forms swayed toward each other, and Lucy, no way reluctantly, received a kiss from—Hugh Branning!

Very naughty, certainly,—but it is incumbent on me to tell the truth, and accordingly I have put it down.

Now my readers are doubtless prepared for a catastrophe. They will expect to hear Mrs. Kinloch cry, "Lucy Ransom, you jade, what are you doing? Take your clothes and trumpery and leave this house!" You will suppose that her son Hugh will be shut up in the cellar on bread and water, or sent off to sea in disgrace. That is the traditional way with angry mistresses, I know; but Mrs. Kinloch was not one of the common sort. She did not know Talleyrand's maxim,—"Never act from first impulses, for they are always—right!" Indeed, I doubt if she had ever heard of that slippery Frenchman; but observation and experience had led her to adopt a similar line of policy.

Therefore she did not scold or send away Lucy; she could not well do without her; and besides, there were reasons which made it desirable that the girl should remain friendly. She did not call out to her hopeful son, either,—although her fingers did itch to tweak his profligate ears. She knew that a dispute with him would only end in his going off in a huff, and she thought she could employ him better. So she coughed first and then stepped out into the yard. Hugh presently came sauntering down the walk, and Lucy sang among the clothes-lines as blithely and unconcerned as though