Then I wildly wished that I were the veiled prophet of Khora.s.san. But no! I was only bashful John Flutter, the b.u.t.t and ridicule of a little meddling village.

I knew that this last adventure would revive the memory of all my previous exploits. I knew the girls would all go to see each other the next day so as to have a good giggle together. Worse than that, I knew there would be an unprecedented run of custom at the store. There wouldn't be a girl in the whole place who wouldn't require something in the dry-goods line the coming day; they would come and ask for pins and needles just for the heartless fun of seeing _me_ enduring the pangs of mental pins and needles.

So I resolved that I would not get up that morning. The breakfast-bell rang three times; mother came up to knock at my door.

"Oh, I am so sleepy, mother!" I answered, with a big yawn; "you knew I was up last night. Don't want any breakfast, just another little nap."

So the good soul went down, leaving me to my wretched thoughts. At noon she came up again.

"John, you had better rise now. Father can't come to dinner there's so many customers in the store. Seems as if there was going to be a ball to-night again; every girl in town is after ribbon, or lace, or hair-pins, or something."

"I can't get up to-day, mother. I'm awfully unwell--got a high fever--_you'll_ have to go in and lend father a helping hand"; and so she brought me a cup of tea and a piece of toast, and then went up to take father's place while he ate his dinner.

I _guess_ she suspected I'd been done for again by the way those young women laughed when she told them I was sick in bed: for she was pretty cross when I sneaked down to tea, and didn't seem to worry about how I felt. Well, I kept pretty quiet the rest of the season. There were dances and sleighing parties, but I stayed away from them, and attended strictly to business.

I don't know but that I might have begun to enjoy some peace of mind, after the winter and part of the spring had pa.s.sed without any very awful catastrophe having occurred to me; but, some time in the latter part of May, when the roses were just beginning to bloom, and everything was lovely, a pretty cousin from some distant part of the State came to spend a month at our house. I had never seen her before, and you may imagine how I felt when she rushed at me and kissed me, and called me her dear cousin John, just as if we had known each other all the days of our lives. I think it was a constant surprise to her to find that I was bashful. _She_ wasn't a bit so. It embarra.s.sed me a thousand times more to see how she would slyly watch out of the corner of her laughing eye for the signs of my diffidence.

Well, of course, all the girls called on her, and boys too, as to that, and I had to take her to return their visits, and I was in hot water all the time. Before she went away, mother gave her a large evening party. I behaved with my usual elegance of manner, stepping on the ladies' trains and toes in dancing, calling them by other people's names, and all those little courtesies for which I was so famous. I even contrived to sit down where there was no chair, to the amus.e.m.e.nt of the fellows. My cousin Susie was going away the next day. I was dead in love with her, and my mind was taken up with the intention of telling her so. I had not the faintest idea of whether she cared for me or not. She had laughed at me and teased me mercilessly.

On the contrary, she had been very encouraging to Tom Todd, a young lawyer of the place--a little sn.o.b, with self-conceit enough in his dapper body for six larger men. This evening he had been particularly attentive to her. Susie was pretty and quite an heiress, so I knew Tom Todd would try to secure her. He was just that kind of a fellow who could propose to a girl while he was asking her out for a set of the lanciers, or handing her a plate of salad at supper. Alas, I could do nothing of the kind. With all my superior opportunities, here the last evening was half through, and I had not yet made a motion to secure the prize. I watched Tom as if he had been a thief and I a detective.

I was cold and hot by turns whenever he bent to whisper in Susie's ear, as he did about a thousand times. At last, as supper-time approached, I saw my cousin slip out into the dining-room. I thought mother had sent her to see that all was right, before marshalling the company out to the feast.

"Now, or never," I thought, turning pale as death; and with one resolute effort I slipped into the hall and so into the dining-room.

Susie was there, doing something; but when she saw me enter she gave a little shriek and darted into the pantry. No! I was not to be baffled thus. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead, but I thought of that sn.o.b in the parlor, and pressed on to the pantry-door.

"Susie," said I, very softly, trying to open it--"Susie, I _must_ speak to you. Let me in."

The more I tried to open the door the more firmly she held it.

"Do go along with you, cousin John," she answered.

"I can't, Susie. I want to see you a minute."

"See me? Oh, what a wicked fellow! Go along, or I'll tell your mother."

"Tell, or not; for once I'm going to have my own way," I said, and pressing my knee against the door, I forced it open, and there stood my pretty cousin, angry and blushing, trying to hide from my view the crinoline which had come off in the parlor.

I retreated, closing the door and waiting for her to re-appear.

In a few minutes she came out, evidently offended.

"Susie," I stammered, "I did--did--didn't dream your bus--bus--bustle had come off. I only wanted to tell you that--that I pr--pr--pri--prize your li--li--li--"

"But I never lie," she interrupted me, saucily.

"That I shall be the most mis--is--is--er--able fellow that ever--"

"Now don't make a goose of yourself, cousin John," she said, sweetly, laying her little hand on my shoulder for an instant. "Stop where you are! Tom Todd asked me to marry him, half an hour ago, and I said I would."

Tom Todd, then, had got the start of me; after all. Worse! he had sneaked into the dining-room after Susie, and had come up behind us and heard every word. As I turned, dizzy and confused, I saw his smiling, insolent face. Enraged, unhappy, and embarra.s.sed by his grieving triumph, I hastily turned to retreat into the pantry!

Unfortunately, there were two doors close together, one leading to the pantry, the other to the cellar. In my blind embarra.s.sment I mistook them; and the next moment the whole company were startled by a loud b.u.mp--b.u.mping, a crash, and a woman's scream.

There was a barrel of soft-soap at the foot of the cellar-stairs, and I fell, head first, into that.

CHAPTER XIX.

DRIVEN FROM HIS LAST DEFENCE.

Susie was Mrs. Todd before I recovered from the effects of my involuntary soap-bath.

"Smart trick!" cried my father when he fished me out of the barrel.

I thought it _was_ smart, sure enough, by the sensation in my eyes.

But I have drawn a veil over that bit of my history. I know my eyesight was injured for all that summer. I could not tell a piece of silk from a piece of calico, except by the feeling; so I was excused from clerking in the store, and sat round the house with green goggles on, and wished I were different from what I was. By fall my eyesight got better. One day father came in the parlor where I was sitting moping, having just seen Tom Todd drive by in a new buggy with his bride, and said to me:

"John, I am disappointed in you."

"I know it," I answered him meekly.

"You look well enough, and you have talent enough," he went on; "but you are too ridiculously bashful for an ostrich."

"I know it," I again replied. "Oh, father, father, why did they take that caul from my face?"

"That--what?" inquired my puzzled sire.

"That caul--wasn't I born with a caul, father?"

"Now that I recall it, I believe you were," responded father, while his stern face relaxed into a smile, "and I wish to goodness they had left it on you, John; but they didn't, and that's an end of it. What I was going to say was this. Convinced that you will never succeed as my successor--that your unconquerable diffidence unfits you for the dry-goods trade--I have been looking around for some such situation as I have often heard you sigh for. The old light-house keeper on Buncombe Island is dead, and I have caused you to be appointed his successor. You will not see a human being except when supplies are brought to you, which, in the winter, will be only once in two months.

Even then your peace will not be disturbed by any sight of one of the other s.e.x. You will not need a caul there! Go, my son, and remain until you can outgrow your absurd infirmity."

I felt dismayed at the prospect, now that it was so near at hand. I had often--in the distance--yearned for the security of a light-house.

Yet I now looked about on our comfortable parlor with a longing eye. I recalled the pleasant tea-hour when there were no visitors; I thought of the fun the boys and girls would have this coming winter, and I wished father had not been so precipitate in securing that vacant place.

Just then Miss Gabble came up our steps, and shortly after entered the parlor. She was one of those dreaded beings, who always filled me with the direst confusion. She sat right down by my side and squeezed my hand.

"My poor, dear fellow-mortal!" said she, getting her sharp face so close to mine I thought she was going to kiss me, "how do you do?

Wearing them goggles yet? It is too bad. And yet, after all, they are sort of becoming to you. In fact, you're so good-looking you can wear anything. And how your mustache does grow, to be sure!"

I saw father was getting up to leave the room, and I flung her hand away, saying quickly to him: "I'll get the gla.s.s of water, father."

And so I beat him that time, and got out of the room, quite willing to live in the desert of Sahara, if by it I could get rid of such females.

Well, I went to Buncombe Island. I retired from the world to a light-house in the first bloom of my youth. I did not want to be a monk--I could not be a man--and so I did what fate and my father laid out for me to do. Through the fine autumn weather I enjoyed my retirement. I had taken plenty of books and magazines with me to while away the time; there was a lovely promenade along the sea-wall on which the tall tower stood, and I could walk there for hours without my pulse being disturbed by visions of parasols, loves of bonnets, and pretty faces under them. I communed with the sea. I told it my rations were too salt; that I didn't like the odor of the oil in filling the lamps; that my legs got tired going up to the lantern, and that my arms gave out polishing the lenses. I also confided to it that I would not mind these little trifles if I only had one being to share my solitude--a modest, shy little creature that I wouldn't be afraid to ask to be my wife.