VI

Mr. Opp, absorbed in the great scheme which was taking definite form in his mind, did not discover until he reached the steps that some one was lying in a hammock on the porch.

It was a dark-haired girl in a pink dress, with a pink bow in her hair and small bows on the toes of her high-heeled slippers--the very kind of person, in fact, that Mr. Opp was most desirous of avoiding.

Fortunately she was asleep, and Mr. Opp, after listening in vain at the door for sounds of Mrs. Gusty within, tiptoed cautiously to the other end of the porch and took his seat on a straight-backed settee.

Let it not for a moment be supposed that Mr. Opp was a stranger to the fascinations of femininity. He had been inoculated at a tender age, and it had taken so completely, so tragically, that he had crept back to life with one illusion sadly shattered, and the conviction firm within him that henceforth he was immune. His att.i.tude toward the subject remained, however, interested, but cautious--such as a good little boy might entertain toward a loaded pistol.

As he sat very straight and very still on the green settee, he tried to compose his mind for the coming interview with Mrs. Gusty. Directly across the road was Aker's old carpenter-shop, a small, square, one-story edifice, shabby, and holding out scant promise of journalistic possibilities. Mr. Opp, however, seldom saw things as they were; he saw them as they were going to be. Before five minutes had elapsed he had the shop painted white, with tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs of red, new panes in the windows, ground gla.s.s below and clear above, an imposing sign over the door, and the roadway blocked with eager subscribers. He would have to have an a.s.sistant, of course, some one to attend to the general details; but he would have charge of everything himself. He would edit a paper, comprehensive in its scope, and liberal in its views. Science, art, religion, society, and politics would all be duly chronicled. Politics!

Why, his paper would be an organ--an organ of the Democratic Party!

At the thought of being an organ, Mr. Opp's bosom swelled with such pride that his settee creaked, and he glanced apprehensively toward the other end of the porch.

The young lady was still asleep, with her head resting on her bare arm, and one foot hanging limply below her ruffled petticoat.

Suddenly Mr. Opp leaned forward and viewed her slipper with interest. He had recognized the make! It was x.x.x-aa. He had carried a sample exactly like it, and had been wont to call enthusiastic attention to the curve of the instep and the set of the heel. He now realized that the effect depended entirely on the bow, and he seriously considered writing to the firm and suggesting the improvement.

In the midst of his reflections the young lady stirred and then sat up.

Her hair was tumbled, and her eyes indicated that she had been indulging in recent tears. Resting her chin on her palms, she gazed gloomily down the road.

Mr. Opp, at the other end of the porch, also gazed gloomily down the road. The fact that he must make his presence known was annihilated by the yet more urgent fact that he could think of nothing to say. A b.u.mblebee wheeled in narrowing circles above his head and finally lighted upon his coat-sleeve. But Mr. Opp remained immovable. He was searching his vocabulary for a word which would gently crack the silence without shattering it to bits.

The b.u.mblebee saved the situation. Detecting some rare viand in a crack of the porch midway between the settee and the hammock, and evidently being a bibulous bee, it set up such a buzz of excitement that Mr. Opp looked at it, and the young lady looked at it, and their eyes met.

"Excuse me," said Mr. Opp, rather breathlessly; "you was asleep, and I come to see Mrs. Gusty, and--er--the fact is--I'm Mr. Opp."

At this announcement the young lady put her hand to her head, and by a dexterous movement rearranged the brown halo of her hair, and twisted the pink bow into its proper, aggressive position.

"Mother'll--be back soon,"--she spoke without embarra.s.sment, yet with the hesitation of one who is not in the habit of speaking for herself,--"I--I--didn't know I was going to sleep."

"No," said Mr. Opp; then added politely, "neither did I." Silence again looming on the horizon, he plunged on: "I think I used to be in the habit of seeing you when you was--er--younger, didn't I?"

"Up at the store." She smiled faintly. "You bought me a bag of pop-corn once with a prize in it. It was a breastpin; I've got it yet."

Mr. Opp scowled slightly as he tried to extract an imaginary splinter from his thumb. "Do you--er--attend school?" he asked, taking refuge in a paternal att.i.tude.

"I'm finished," she said listlessly. "I've been going to the Young Ladies' Seminary at Coreyville."

"Didn't you taken to it?" asked Mr. Opp, wishing fervently that Mrs.

Gusty would return.

"Oh, yes," said his companion, earnestly. "I love it; I was a special. I took music and botany and painting. I was in four concerts last year and played in the double duets at the commencements." During the pause that followed, Mr. Opp considered various names for his newspaper. "Mother isn't going to let me go back," the soft, drawling voice continued; "she says when a girl is nineteen she ought to settle down. She wants me to get married."

Mr. Opp laid "The Cove Chronicle" and "The Weekly Bugle" aside for further consideration, and inquired politely if there was any special person whom Mrs. Gusty desired for a son-in-law.

"Oh, no," said the girl, indifferently; "she hasn't thought of anybody.

But I don't want to get married--yet. I want to go back to the seminary and be a music teacher. I hate it here, every bit of it. It's so stupid--and lonesome, and--"

A break in her voice caused Mr. Opp to postpone a decision of the day on which his paper was to be published, and to give her his undivided attention. Distress, even in beauty, was not to be withstood, and the fact that she was unusually pretty had been annoying Mr. Opp ever since she had spoken to him. As she turned her head away and wiped her eyes, he rose impulsively and moved toward her:

"Say, look a-here now, you ain't crying, are you?" he asked.

She shook her head in indignant denial.

"Well--er--you don't seem exactly happy, as you might say," suggested Mr. Opp, boldly.

"I'm not," she confessed, biting her lip. "I oughtn't to talk to you about it, but there isn't anybody here that would understand. They think I'm stuck up when I talk about books and music and--and other kind of people. They just keep on doing the same stupid things till they get old and die. Only mother won't even let me do stupid things; she says I bother her when I try to help around the house."

"Can't you sew or make mottoes or something?" asked Mr. Opp, very vague as to feminine accomplishments.

"What's the use?" asked the girl. "Mother does everything for me. She always says she'd rather do it than teach me how."

"Don't you take to reading?" asked Mr. Opp.

"Oh, yes," she said; "I used to read all the time down at school; but there never is anything to read up here."

The editor-elect peopled the country with similar cases, and he immediately saw himself as a public benefactor supplying starved subscribers with a bountiful repast of weekly news.

"Won't you sit down?" asked the girl, interrupting his reflections. "I don't know what can be keeping mother."

Mr. Opp looked about for a chair, but there was none. Then he glanced at his companion, and saw that she was holding aside her pink skirt and evidently offering him a seat beside her in the hammock. He advanced a step, retreated, then weakly capitulated. Sitting very rigid, nursing his hat on his knees, and inserting his forefinger between his neck and his collar as if to breathe better, he remarked that it was getting warmer all the time.

"This isn't anything to what it will be later," said the girl; "it keeps on getting hotter and dustier all the time. I don't believe there's such a stupid, poky, little old place anywhere else in the world. You ought to be mighty glad you don't live here."

Mr. Opp cleared his throat with some dignity. "I expect to remain here permanent now. I--well--the truth is, I have decided to operate a newspaper here."

"No!" cried the girl, incredulously. "Not in the Cove!"

"In the Cove," repeated Mr. Opp, firmly. "There's great need here for a live, enterprising newspaper. It's a virgin field, you might say. There never was a place that needed a public voice more. My paper is going to be a voice that hears all sides of a question; it's going to appeal to the aged and the young and all them that lies between."

"It will be mighty grand for us!" said his companion, with interest.

"When is it going to start?"

Definite plans being decidedly nebulous, Mr. Opp wisely confined himself to generalities. He touched casually on his remarkable fitness for the work, his wide experience, his worldly knowledge. He hinted that in time he expected to venture into even deeper literary waters--poetry, and a novel, perhaps. As he talked, he realized that for the second time that day he was looked upon with approval. Being accepted at his own estimate proved a new and exhilarating sensation.

It was pleasant on the wide porch, with the honeysuckle shutting out the sun, and the long, yellow blossoms filling the air with fragrance. It was pleasant to hear the contented chuckle of the hens and the sleepy hum of the bees, and the sound of his own voice; but most of all it was pleasant, albeit disconcerting, to glance sidewise occasionally and find a pair of credulous brown eyes raised to his in frank admiration. What if the swing of the hammock was making him dizzy and one foot had gone to sleep? These were minor considerations unworthy of mention.

"And just to think," the girl was saying, "that you may be right across the road! I won't mind staying at home so much if you'll let me come over and see you make the newspaper."

"You might like to a.s.sist sometime," said Mr. Opp, magnanimously, at the same time cautiously removing a fluttering pink ribbon from his knee. "I could let you try your hand on a wedding or a 'bituary, or something along that line."

"Oh, really?" she cried, her eyes brightening. "I'd just love to. I can write compositions real nice, and you could help me a little."