CHAPTER XXXVIII. "WE MUST BE CAUTIOUS."

Eva was at the chapel that morning and overheard, of the conversation between Miss Gusher and Miss Vapors, just enough to pique her curiosity and rouse her alarm. Of all things, she dreaded any such report getting into the whirlwind of gossip that always eddies round a church door where there is an interesting, unmarried rector, and she resolved to caution Angie on the very first opportunity; and so, when her share of wreaths and crosses was finished, and the afternoon sun began to come level through the stained windows, she crossed over to Angie's side, to take her home with her to dinner.

"I've something to tell you," she said, "and you must come home and stay with me to-night." And so Angie came.

"Do you know," said Eva, as soon as the sisters found themselves alone in her chamber, where they were laying off their things and preparing for dinner, "do you know that Miss Gusher?"

"I—no, very slightly," said Angie, shaking out her shawl to fold it. "She's a very cultivated woman, I believe."

"Well, I heard her saying some disagreeable things about you and Mr. St. John this morning," said Eva.

The blood flushed in Angie's cheek, and she turned quickly to the glass and began arranging her hair.

"What did she say?" she inquired.

"Something about the Van Arsdel girls always getting up flirtations."

"Nonsense! how hateful! I'm sure it's no fault of mine that Mr. St. John came and spoke to me."

"Then he did come?"

"Oh, yes; I was perfectly astonished. I was sitting all alone in that dark corner where the great hemlock tree was, and the first I knew he was there. You see, I criticised his illuminated card—that one in the strange, queer letters—I said I couldn't understand it; but Miss Gusher, Miss Vapors, and all the girls were oh-ing and ah-ing about it, and I felt quite snubbed and put down. I supposed it must be my stupidity, and so I just went off to my tree and sat down to work quietly in the dark corner, and left Miss Gusher expatiating on mottoes and illuminations. I knew she was very accomplished and clever and all that, and that I didn't know anything about such things."

"Well, then," said Eva, "he followed you?"

"Yes, he came suddenly in from the vestry behind the tree, and I thought, or hoped, he stood so that nobody noticed us, and he insisted on my telling him why I didn't like his illumination. I said I did like it, that I thought it was beautifully done, but that I did not think it would be of any use to those poor children and folks to have inscriptions that they didn't understand; and he said I was quite right, and that he should alter it and put it in plain English; and then he said, what a help it was to have a woman's judgment on things, what a misfortune it was that he had never had a sister or any friend of that kind, and then he asked me to be a sister to him, and tell him frankly always just what I thought of him, and I said I would. And then"—

"What then?"

"Oh, Eva, I can't tell you; but he spoke so earnestly and quick, and asked me if I couldn't love him just a little; he asked me to call him Arthur, and then, if you believe me, he would have me give him my glove, and so I let him take it, because I was afraid some of those girls would see us talking together. I felt almost frightened that he should speak so, and I wanted him to go away."

"Well, Angie dear, what do you think of all this?"

"I know he cares for me very much," said Angie, quickly, "more than he says."

"And you, Angie?"

"I think he's good and noble and true, and I love him."

"As a sister, of course," said Eva, laughing.

"Never mind how—I love him," said Angie; "and I shall use my sisterly privilege to caution him to be very distant and dignified to me in future, when those prying eyes are around."

"Well now, darling," said Eva, with all the conscious dignity of early matronage, "we shall have to manage this matter very prudently—for those girls have had their suspicions aroused, and you know how such things will fly through the air. The fact is, there is nothing so perplexing as just this state of things; when you know as well as you know anything that a man is in love with you, and yet you are not engaged to him. I know all about the trouble of that, I'm sure; and it seems to me, what with Mamma, Aunt Maria, and all the rest of them, it was a perfect marvel how Harry and I ever came together. Now, there's that Miss Gusher, she'll be on the watch all the time, like a cat at a mouse-hole; and she's going to be there when we get the Christmas-tree ready and tie on the things, and you must manage to keep as far off from him as possible. I shall be there, and I shall have my eyes in my head, I promise you. We must try to lull their suspicions to sleep."

"Dear me," said Angie, "how disagreeable!"

"I'm sorry for you, darling, but I've kept it off as long as I could; I've seen for a long time how things are going."

"You have? Oh, Eva!"

"Yes; and I have had all I could do to keep Jim Fellows from talking, and teasing you, as he has been perfectly longing to do for a month past."

"You don't say that Jim has noticed anything?"

"Yes, Jim noticed his looking at you, the very first thing after he came to Sunday-school."

"Well, now, at first I noticed that he looked at me often, but I thought it was because he saw something he disapproved of—and it used to embarrass me. Then I thought he seemed to avoid me, and I wondered why. And I wondered, too, why he always would take occasion to look at me. I noticed, when your evenings first began, that he never came near me, and never spoke to me, and yet his eyes were following me wherever I went. The first evening you had, he walked round and round me nearly the whole evening, and never spoke a word; then suddenly he came and sat down by me, when I was sitting by Mrs. Betsey, and gave me a message from the Prices; but he spoke in such a stiff, embarrassed way, and then there was an awful pause, and suddenly he got up and went away again; and poor little Mrs. Betsey said, 'Bless me, how stiff and ungracious he is'; and I said that I believed he wasn't much used to society—but, after a while, this wore away, and he became very social, and we grew better and better acquainted all the time. Although I was a little contradictious, and used to controvert some of his notions, I fancy it was rather a novelty to him to find somebody that didn't always give up to him, for, I must say, some of the women that go to our chapel do make fools of themselves about him. It really provokes me past all bearing. If any body could set me against a man, it would be those silly, admiring women who have their hands and eyes always raised in adoration, whatever he does. It annoys him, I can see, for it is very much against his taste, and he likes me because, he says, I always will tell him the truth."

Meanwhile St. John had gone back to his study, walking as on a cloud. The sunshine streaming into a western window touched the white lilies over his prie dieu till they seemed alive. He took down the illumination and looked at it. He had a great mind to give this to her as a Christmas present. Why not? Was she not to be his own sister? And his thoughts strolled along through pleasant possibilities and all the privileges of a brother. Certainly, he longed to see her now, and talk them over with her; and suddenly it occurred to him that there were a few points in relation to the arrangement of the tree about which it would be absolutely necessary to get the opinion of Mrs. Henderson. Whether this direction of the path of duty had any relation to the fact that he had last seen her going away from the vestry arm in arm with Angie, we will not assume to say; but the solemn fact was that, that evening, just as it came time to drop the lace curtains over the Henderson windows, when the blazing wood fire was winking and blinking roguishly at the brass andirons, the door-bell rang, and in he walked.

Angelique had her lap full of dolls, and was sitting like Iris in the rainbow, in a confused mélange of silks, and gauzes, and tissues, and spangles. Three dressed dolls were propped up in various attitudes around her, and she was holding the fourth, while she fitted a sky-blue mantilla which she was going to trim with silver braid. Where Angie got all her budget of fineries was a standing mystery in the household, only that she had an infinitely persuasive tongue, and talked supplies out of admiring clerks and milliners' apprentices. It was a pretty picture to see her there in the warm, glowing room, tossing and turning her filmy treasures, and cocking her little head on one side and the other with an air of profound reflection.

Harry was gone out. Eva was knitting a comforter in her corner, and everything was as still and as cosy as heart could desire, when St. John made his way into the parlor and got himself warmly ensconced in his favorite niche. What more could mortal man desire? He talked gravely with Eva, and watched Angie. He thought of a lean, haggard picture of a St. Mary of Egypt, praying forlornly in the desert, that had hitherto stood in his study, and the idea somehow came over him that modern New York saints had taken a much more agreeable turn than those of old. Was it not better to be dressing dolls for poor children than to be rolling up one's eyes and praying alone out in a desert? In his own mind he resolved to take down that picture forthwith. He had, in his overcoat in the hall, his illuminated lilies, wrapped snugly in tissue paper and tied with a blue ribbon; and, all the while he was discoursing with Eva, he was ruminating how he could see Angie alone a minute, just long enough to place it in her hands. Surely, somebody ought to make her a Christmas present, she who was thinking of every one but herself.

Eva was one of the class of diviners, and not at all the person to sit as Madame de Trop in an exigency of this sort, and so she had a sudden call to consult with Mary in the kitchen.

"Now for it," thought St. John, as he rose and drew nearer. Angie looked up with a demure consciousness.

He began fingering her gauzes and her scissors unconsciously.

"Now, now! I don't allow that," she said, playfully, as she took them altogether from his hand.

"I have something for you," he said suddenly.

"Something for me!" with a bright, amused look. "Where is it?"

St. John fumbled a moment in the entry and brought in his parcel. Angie watched him untying it with a kittenish gravity. He laid it down before her. "From your brother, Angie," he said.

"Oh, how lovely! how beautiful! O Mr. St. John, did you do this for me?"

"It was of you I was thinking; you, my inspiration in all that is holy and good; you who strengthen and help me in all that is pure and heavenly."

"Oh, don't say that!"

"It's true, Angie, my Angie, my angel. I knew nothing worthily till I knew you."

Angie looked up at him; her eyes, clear and bright as a bird's, looked into his; their hands clasped together, and then, it was the most natural thing in the world, he kissed her.

"But, Arthur," said Angie, "you must be careful not to arouse disagreeable reports and gossip. What is so sacred between us must not be talked of. Don't look at me, or speak to me, when others are present. You don't know how very easy it is to make people talk."

Mr. St. John promised all manner of prudence, and walked home delighted. And thus these two Babes in the Wood clasped hands with each other, to wander up and down the great forest of life, as simply and sincerely as if they had been Hensel and Grettel in the fairy story. They loved each other, wholly trusted each other without a question, and were walking in dream-land. There was no question of marriage settlements, or rent and taxes; only a joyous delight that they two in this wilderness world had found each other.

We pity him who does not know that there is nothing purer, nothing nearer heaven than a young man's first-enkindled veneration and adoration of womanhood in the person of her who is to be his life's ideal. It is the morning dew before the sun arises.