"That was very stupid of me. My mind has been full of my trouble. I have dreamed about it, and hate the man who holds that mortgage.

"Please do not think of it any more. And when you come, sir, perhaps you can advise us what to do."

Ellesworth looked at her gravely. What would the following week, and the next, and the winter bring forth?

"Perhaps," he said in a whisper that might have come from the Delphian oracle; and then he cantered away.

For the first time since her father's death, Georgiella sang that afternoon as she walked about the garden teasing her plants to bloom.

It was Monday, the fifteenth of December. Mrs. McCorkle ushered Ellesworth upstairs into his own room in the cottage mortgaged in his own name. The sun poured into it like a living blessing. The rose-bush enveloped the windows, and when the sash was raised, delicate tendrils insinuated themselves within, as if, in Southern fashion, they would "shake howdy." The room was dainty and home-like. It flashed across Ellesworth as he sank into the cushioned rocking-chair with a long breath of content, that it might have been Georgiella's. It was in the dreamy part of the day. The sun was dipping under the high branches of the pines. Then the luxury of leaning out of the window in December! He could not help but think of it as _his_ sun, and _his_ garden and _his_ trees. And now Georgiella came out, bareheaded, and swept the pine needles and leaves from the narrow box-bordered path, and snipped dead branches from the shrubs, and then before she went to feed the chickens she cast up at him a shy glance that made his heart leap within him. He did not leave his room until he was called to supper. His fancy was feverish, and kept picturing his mortgaged girl in a Boston drawing-room, thrilling all the people he knew with her beauty. He called it carmine beauty; but he was young and ardent.

He felt it when he first saw her, but that eventful afternoon he formulated it and repeated it over and over again until he became dizzy--"I love her! I love her!" And then visions of work and strength and success, and ambitions that had been stifled, began to spring within him like blades from watered bulbs. The electric shock had come. He knew it. He meant to spring to it like a man.

Dreamily he dressed for supper, and dreamily descended. Mrs. McCorkle greeted him with her fine, thin manner. The young man looked about him curiously. Aunt Betsey waited on the table. He tried not to think of her hospitality in the matter of snuff. The room was worn and bare and gray; so bereft of all but the most necessary furniture that its few ornaments had a startling conspicuousness. He noticed a fat Chinese vase set up like an idol in an old escritoire. Over the mantel was a gla.s.s-case religiously protecting some coins and ancient papers. A rusty sword hung on the wall. Biographies of Lee and Jackson, flanking the Chinese fat vase in the dilapidated escritoire, and a villainous crayon framed in immortelles upon the wall, that probably represented his deceased debtor, completed the ornamentation of the room. Miss Benson entered when he had gone as far as this, and vivaciously exhibited the bric-a-brac of the room.

"This is a Ming." She pointed to the fat vase. "I understand there isn't another like it in the country. It belongs to the Ming dynasty."

Although from Boston, Ellesworth was not familiar with the Ming dynasty, but he bowed and feebly e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed,--

"Ah! this is a real Ming, is it?"

"And there," said the young lady, bringing him before the gla.s.s-case, "are family possessions. That is a coin of George II.; those are Pine-tree shillings; those yellow papers are two copies of a continental newspaper, and this is the South Carolinian continental penny."

Ellesworth inspected the treasures gravely. He did his best not to smile.

"Very remarkable!" he murmured. "How Southern!" he thought.

"Colonel Tom Garvin says there are nothing like them in the country. I suppose they would bring a great deal if sold," she added, wistfully.

"But we don't like to sell them. Besides, we never saw anybody who wanted to buy them."

Acquaintance under one roof pa.s.ses quickly into intimacy. Love moves with fleet feet when two young people breakfast and dine together with a vague chaperone. A tropical garden, soft evenings and youthful impetuosity shorten the span to experience thought necessary to precede an engagement.

Georgiella was the soul of domestic comfort--as Southern women are. She was a high-spirited, variable, bewitching creature. At first, the Northerner could not understand her indifference to her obligations as a mortgager. Why did she not sell the Ming vase? She looked upon debt not as a disgrace, but as an inconvenience. Foreclosure proceedings were under way, and it never occurred to the two women to stop them with even a part of the fifty dollars which Ellesworth paid for his board in advance. When Ellesworth found out that this trait was not a pauper's, but like Georgiella's strange beauty, const.i.tutional, he forbore to criticise it. In truth, he was too much in love now to criticise the girl at all. It is probable that if she had robbed his pocketbook he would have merely said, "How interesting! it is her tropical way."

A day or two before Christmas he drove over to Sunshine and returned with a happy, tired face.

"You would take a Christmas present from me, wouldn't you?" he asked with unprecedented humility.

"It's in a paper," he explained.

"What is it?" she asked uncomfortably, for she felt his serious look upon her.

"It's--eh--a trifle that I think you will like," replied Ellesworth without a smile.

Christmas came cheerfully into the mortgaged house. Georgiella cried a little for her father's sake. In spite of her bereavement, and of the fact that she was sure the sheriff would attach the house that day of all others, she did not feel very wretched. She felt that she was wicked because she was so happy. There were wings in her heart.

It was not the custom to hang up stockings at the Benson's.

"My things have always been put into the Ming vase," Georgiella explained, "and the others went on the breakfast table."

She did not look at Ellesworth often. Her eyes dropped. Her cheeks were like red camellias. She felt in a hurry all of the time. The young man himself took the situation out in looking at his watch. It seemed to him as if the world were turning over too fast. He thought of what he meant to do stolidly, notwithstanding.

They went out and gathered mistletoe in the swamps. He climbed trees and tore his hands and fell into the water with zest. They brought home a barrelful of it. He thought how he had bought it at twenty-five cents a spray on Washington street. He held a great branch of it behind Georgiella over her head, and looked at her. She started like a wild animal, and kept ahead of him all the way home.

On Christmas morning Ellesworth got up early--he had hardly slept; he could not rest, and went softly downstairs. The door into the dining-room was open, and she was there before him. She stood before the Ming vase. The mistletoe branch to which he had fastened his present, and which he had set into the vase to look like a little Christmas tree, lay tossed beneath her feet. The pearly white berries were scattered on the floor. The mortgage was in her hand--trust deeds, princ.i.p.al notes, interest notes, insurance policy. She was turning the papers over helplessly. She looked scared and was quite pale. Her bosom heaved boisterously. She heard him and confronted him. She managed to stammer out,--

"What, sir, does this mean?"

It required a brave man to tell her in her present mood; but he did.

"It only means that I love you," said Ellesworth point blank.

The girl went from blinding white to blazing crimson, but she stood her ground. The mortgage papers shook in her hands. He thought that she was going to tear them up. To gain time, for he dared not approach her, he stooped and picked up the disdained mistletoe. When he had raised himself she shot out this awful question, looking at him as she did when they first met.

"Are _you--He_?"

The young man bowed his head before her. If he had set fire to her place, or robbed her father's grave, she could not have regarded him with a more crushing scorn. She tried to speak again, but her pa.s.sion choked her.

"I--I give you back your home," he protested humbly. "It is mine no longer. It is your own Don't blame me. I love you."

"My father did not bring me up to take valuable presents from--Boston--gentlemen!" blazed the Southern girl.

She waved him aside, swept by him without another look, and melted out of the room. But he noticed that she took the mortgage papers with her.

In the course of the morning he threw himself upon the mercy of Mrs.

McCorkle.

"I have a right," he said; "I want to make her my wife."

"Georgiella is not behaving prettily," said Mrs. McCorkle severely. "If a Northerner _does act like_ a gentleman, the least a Southern girl can do is to behave like a lady. I will speak to Georgiella, sir."

Georgiella came to the Christmas dinner with blazing eyes. She ate in silence, looking like an offended G.o.ddess, dressed in an old black silk gown of her mother's trimmed with aged Valenciennes lace.

But after dinner she stayed in the dining-room while Mrs. McCorkle and Aunt Betsey went into the kitchen. She walked up to the Ming vase and stood before it. Ellesworth followed her.

"I have been thinking it over," she began abruptly in a quaint affectation of a business-like tone. "I will keep the mortgage--thank you, sir. It _is_ my home, you know," she put in pugnaciously. "But I will pay for it, if you please."

"_Pay for it!_" gasped Ellesworth.

"Yes, sir; I will sell you the Ming vase," returned Miss Benson calmly, "and the two Revolutionary papers, and the coin of George the Second and the rest--" She waved her hand toward the gla.s.s-case. "You may take them to Boston with you."

These were her a.s.sets. Ellesworth looked at her for a moment, torn between astonishment, pity, amus.e.m.e.nt and love; but love got the better of them all, and he answered solemnly,--

"Yes, I will take the Ming vase, and the Revolutionary papers, and the old coins and you too, my darling!"