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The Wooing Of Miss Woppit
by
Mary was not long in discovering that Three-fingered Hoover had a little romance all of his own. Maybe some of the other boys told her about it. At any rate, Mary was charmed, and without hesitation she commanded Hoover to confess all. How the big, awkward fellow ever got through with it I for my part can’t imagine, but tell her he did–yes, he fairly unbosomed his secret, and Mary was still more delighted and laughed and declared that it was the loveliest love story she had ever heard. Right here was where Hoover’s first and only subtlety came in.
“And now, Miss Mary,” says he, “you can do me a good turn, and I hope you will do it. Get acquainted with the lady and work it up with her for me. Tell her that you know–not that I told you, but that you happen to have found it out, that I like her–like her better ‘n anybody else; that I ‘m the pure stuff; that if anybody ties to me they can find me thar every time and can bet their last case on me! Don’t lay it on too thick, but sort of let on I ‘m O. K. You women understand such things–if you ‘ll help me locate this claim I ‘m sure everything ‘ll pan out all right; will ye?”
The bare thought of promoting a love affair set Mary nearly wild with enthusiasm. She had read of experiences of this kind, but of course she had never participated in any. She accepted the commission gayly yet earnestly. She would seek Miss Woppit at once, and she would be so discreet in her tactics–yes, she would be as artful as the most skilled diplomat at the court of love.
Had she met Miss Woppit? Yes, and then again no. She had been rambling in the glen yesterday and, coming down the road, had stopped near the pathway leading to The Bower to pick a wild flower of exceeding brilliancy. About to resume her course to camp she became aware that another stood near her. A woman, having passed noiselessly from the cabin, stood in the gravelly pathway looking upon the girl with an expression wholly indefinable. The woman was young, perhaps twenty; she was tall and of symmetrical form, though rather stout; her face was comely, perchance a bit masculine in its strength of features, and the eyes were shy, but of swift and certain glance, as if instantaneously they read through and through the object upon which they rested.
“You frightened me,” said Mary Lackington, and she had been startled, truly; “I did not hear you coming, and so I was frightened when I saw you standing there.”
To this explanation the apparition made no answer, but continued to regard Mary steadfastly with the indefinable look–an expression partly of admiration, partly of distrust, partly of appeal, perhaps. Mary Lackington grew nervous; she did therefore the most sensible thing she could have done under the circumstances–she proceeded on her way homeward.
This, then, was Mary’s first meeting with Miss Woppit. Not particularly encouraging to a renewal of the acquaintance; yet now that Mary had so delicate and so important a mission to execute she burned to know more of the lonely creature on that hill side, and she accepted with enthusiasm, as I have said, the charge committed to her by the enamored Hoover.
Sir Charles and his daughter remained at the camp about three weeks. In that time Mary became friendly with Miss Woppit, as intimate, in fact, as it was possible for anybody to become with her. Mary found herself drawn strangely and inexplicably toward the woman. The fascination which Miss Woppit exercised over her was altogether new to Mary; here was a woman of lowly birth and in lowly circumstances, illiterate, neglected, lonely, yet possessing a charm–an indefinable charm which was distinct and potent, yet not to be analyzed–yes, hardly recognizable by any process of cool mental dissection, but magically persuasive in the subtlety of its presence and influence. Mary had sought to locate, to diagnose that charm; did it lie in her sympathy with the woman’s lonely lot, or was it the romance of the wooing, or was it the fascination of those restless, searching eyes that Mary so often looked up to find fixed upon her with an expression she could not forget and could not define?