"I reckon, Miss Trotter," he said bluntly, "that you don't know anything of this business that brings me here. At least," he hesitated, with a certain rough courtesy, "I should judge from your general style and gait that you wouldn't have let it go on so far if you had, but the fact is, that darned fool brother of mine--beg your pardon!--has gone and got himself engaged to one of the girls that help here,--a yellow-haired foreigner, called Frida Jansen.""I was not aware that it had gone so far as that," said Miss Trotter quietly, "although his admiration for her was well known, especially to his doctor, at whose request I selected her to especially attend to your brother.""The doctor is a fool," broke in Mr. Calton abruptly. "He only thought of keeping Chris quiet while he finished his job.""And really, Mr. Calton," continued Miss Trotter, ignoring the interruption, "I do not see what right I have to interfere with the matrimonial intentions of any guest in this house, even though or--as you seem to put it--BECAUSE the object of his attentions is in its employ."Mr. Calton stared--angrily at first, and then with a kind of wondering amazement that any woman--above all a housekeeper--should take such a view. "But," he stammered, "I thought you--you--looked after the conduct of those girls.""I'm afraid you've assumed too much," said Miss Trotter placidly.
"My business is to see that they attend to their duties here.
Frida Jansen's duty was--as I have just told you--to look after your brother's room. And as far as I understand you, you are not here to complain of her inattention to that duty, but of its resulting in an attachment on your brother's part, and, as you tell me, an intention as to her future, which is really the one thing that would make my 'looking after her conduct' an impertinence and interference! If you had come to tell me that he did NOT intend to marry her, but was hurting her reputation, I could have understood and respected your motives."Mr. Calton felt his face grow red and himself discomfited. He had come there with the firm belief that he would convict Miss Trotter of a grave fault, and that in her penitence she would be glad to assist him in breaking off the match. On the contrary, to find himself arraigned and put on his defense by this tall, slim woman, erect and smartly buckramed in logic and whalebone, was preposterous!
But it had the effect of subduing his tone.
"You don't understand," he said awkwardly yet pleadingly. "My brother is a fool, and any woman could wind him round her finger.
SHE knows it. She knows he is rich and a partner in the Roanoke Ledge. That's all she wants. She is not a fit match for him.
I've said he was a fool--but, hang it all! that's no reason why he should marry an ignorant girl--a foreigner and a servant--when he could do better elsewhere.""This would seem to be a matter between you and your brother, and not between myself and my servant," said Miss Trotter coldly. "If you cannot convince HIM, your own brother, I do not see how you expect me to convince HER, a servant, over whom I have no control except as a mistress of her WORK, when, on your own showing, she has everything to gain by the marriage. If you wish Mr. Bilson, the proprietor, to threaten her with dismissal unless she gives up your brother,"--Miss Trotter smiled inwardly at the thought of the card-room incident,--"it seems to me you might only precipitate the marriage."Mr. Calton looked utterly blank and hopeless. His reason told him that she was right. More than that, a certain admiration for her clear-sightedness began to possess him, with the feeling that he would like to have "shown up" a little better than he had in this interview. If Chris had fallen in love with HER--but Chris was a fool and wouldn't have appreciated her!
"But you might talk with her, Miss Trotter," he said, now completely subdued. "Even if you could not reason her out of it, you might find out what she expects from this marriage. If you would talk to her as sensibly as you have to me"--"It is not likely that she will seek my assistance as you have,"said Miss Trotter, with a faint smile which Mr. Calton thought quite pretty, "but I will see about it."Whatever Miss Trotter intended to do did not transpire. She certainly was in no hurry about it, as she did not say anything to Frida that day, and the next afternoon it so chanced that business took her to the bank and post-office. Her way home again lay through the Summit woods. It recalled to her the memorable occasion when she was first a witness to Frida's flirtations.
Neither that nor Mr. Bilson's presumed gallantries, however, seemed inconsistent, in Miss Trotter's knowledge of the world, with a serious engagement with young Calton. She was neither shocked nor horrified by it, and for that reason she had not thought it necessary to speak of it to the elder Mr. Calton.
Her path wound through a thicket fragrant with syringa and southernwood; the faint perfume was reminiscent of Atlantic hillsides, where, long ago, a girl teacher, she had walked with the girl pupils of the Vermont academy, and kept them from the shy advances of the local swains. She smiled--a little sadly--as the thought occurred to her that after this interval of years it was again her business to restrain the callow affections. Should she never have the matchmaking instincts of her sex; never become the trusted confidante of youthful passion? Young Calton had not confessed his passion to HER, nor had Frida revealed her secret.
Only the elder brother had appealed to her hard, practical common sense against such sentiment. Was there something in her manner that forbade it? She wondered if it was some uneasy consciousness of this quality which had impelled her to snub the elder Calton, and rebelled against it.
