"If you are going near a carpenter's shop you might get a new shutter for my window;it blew away last night.""It did,miss?"
"Yes,"said the shrill voice of Aunt Sally,from the doorway,"in course it did!Ye must be crazy,Jeff,for thar it stands in No.8,whar ye must have put it after ye picked it up outside."Jeff,conscious that Miss Mayfield's eyes were on his suffused face,stammered "that he would attend to it,"and put spurs to the mare,eager only to escape.
It was not his only discomfiture;for the blacksmith,seeing Jeff's nervousness and anxiety,was suspicious of something wrong,as the world is apt to be,and appeased his conscience after the worldly fashion,by driving a hard bargain with the doubtful brother in affliction--the morality of a horse trade residing always with the seller.Whereby Master Jeff received only eighty dollars for horse and outfit--worth at least two hundred--and was also mulcted of forty dollars,principal and interest for past service of the blacksmith.
Jeff walked home with forty dollars in his pocket--capital to prosecute his honest calling of innkeeper;the blacksmith retired to an adjoining tavern to discuss Jeff's affairs,and further reduce his credit.Yet I doubt which was the happier--the blacksmith estimating his possible gains,and doubtful of some uncertain sequence in his luck,or Jeff,temporarily relieved,boundlessly hopeful,and filled with the vague delights of a first passion.The only discontented brute in the whole transaction was poor Rabbit,who,missing certain attentions,became indignant,after the manner of her sex,bit a piece out of her crib,kicked a hole in her box,and receiving a bad character from the blacksmith,gave a worse one to her late master.
Jeff's purchases were of a temporary and ornamental quality,but not always judicious as a permanent investment.Overhearing some remark from Miss Mayfield concerning the dangerous character of the two-tined steel fork,which was part of the table equipage of the "Half-way House,"he purchased half a dozen of what his aunt was pleased to specify as "split spoons,"and thereby lost his late good standing with her.He not only repaired the window-shutter,but tempered the glaring window itself with a bit of curtain;he half carpeted Miss Mayfield's bed-room with wild-cat skins and the now historical bear-skin,and felt himself overpaid when that young lady,passing the soft tabbyskins across her cheek,declared they were "lovely."For Miss Mayfield,deprecating slaughter in the abstract,accepted its results gratefully,like the rest of her sex,and while willing to "let the hart ungalled play,"nevertheless was able to console herself with its venison.The woods,besides yielding aid and comfort of this kind to the distressed damsel,were flamboyant with vivid spring blossoms,and Jeff lit up the cold,white walls of her virgin cell with demonstrative color,and made--what his aunt,a cleanly soul,whose ideas of that quality were based upon the absence of any color whatever,called--"a litter."The result of which was to make Miss Mayfield,otherwise lanquid and ennuye,welcome Jeff's presence with a smile;to make Jeff,otherwise anxious,eager,and keenly attentive,mute and silent in her presence.Two symptoms bad for Jeff.
Meantime Mr.Mayfield's small conventional spirit pined for fellowship,only to be found in larger civilizations,and sought,under plea of business,a visit to Sacramento,where a few of the Mayfield type,still surviving,were to be found.
This was a relief to Jeff,who only through his regard for the daughter,was kept from open quarrel with the father.He fancied Miss Mayfield felt relieved too,although Jeff had noticed that Mayfield had deferred to his daughter more often than his wife--over whom your conventional small autocrat is always victorious.It takes the legal matrimonial contract to properly develop the first-class tyrant,male or female.
On one of these days Jeff was returning through the woods from marketing at the Forks,which,since the sale of Rabbit,had became a foot-sore and tedious business.He had reached the edge of the forest,and through the wider-spaced trees,the bleak sunlit plateau of his house was beginning to open out,when he stopped instantly.
I know not what Jeff had been thinking of,as he trudged along,but here,all at once,he was thrilled and possessed with the odor of some faint,foreign perfume.He flushed a little at first,and then turned pale.Now the woods were as full of as delicate,as subtle,as grateful,and,I wot,far healthier and purer odors than this;but this represented to Jeff the physical contiguity of Miss Mayfield,who had the knack--peculiar to some of her sex--of selecting a perfume that ideally identified her.Jeff looked around cautiously;at the foot of a tree hard by lay one of her wraps,still redolent of her.Jeff put down the bag which,in lieu of a market basket,he was carrying on his shoulder,and with a blushing face hid it behind a tree.It contained her dinner!
He took a few steps forwards with an assumption of ease and unconsciousness.Then he stopped,for not a hundred yards distant sat--Miss Mayfield on a mossy boulder,her cloak hanging from her shoulders,her hands clasped round her crossed knees,and one little foot out--an exasperating combination of Evangeline and little Red Riding Hood in everything,I fear,but credulousness and self-devotion.She looked up as he walked towards her (non constat that the little witch had not already seen him half a mile away!)and smiled sweetly as she looked at him.So sweetly,indeed,that poor Jeff felt like the hulking wolf of the old world fable,and hesitated--as that wolf did not.The California faunae have possibly depreciated.
"Come here!"she cried,in a small head voice,not unlike a bird's twitter.
Jeff lumbered on clumsily.His high boots had become suddenly very heavy.