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To Him Who Waits
by
He had not long to wait. Up the faint pathway, slippery with its carpet of pine-needles, toiled Beatrix, youngest and fairest of the famous Trenholme sisters. She was all in blue from hat to canvas pumps, varying in tint from the shade of the tinkle of a bluebell at daybreak on a spring Saturday to the deep hue of a Monday morning at nine when the washer-woman has failed to show up.
Beatrix dug her cerulean parasol deep into the pine-needles and sighed. The hermit, on the q. t., removed a grass burr from the ankle of one sandalled foot with the big toe of his other one.
She blued–and almost starched and ironed him–with her cobalt eyes.
“It must be so nice,” she said in little, tremulous gasps, “to be a hermit, and have ladies climb mountains to talk to you.”
The hermit folded his arms and leaned against a tree. Beatrix, with a sigh, settled down upon the mat of pine-needles like a bluebird upon her nest. The hermit followed suit; drawing his feet rather awkwardly under his gunny-sacking.
“It must be nice to be a mountain,” said he, with ponderous lightness, “and have angels in blue climb up you instead of flying over you.”
“Mamma had neuralgia,” said Beatrix, “and went to bed, or I couldn’t have come. It’s dreadfully hot at that horrid old inn. But we hadn’t the money to go anywhere else this summer.”
“Last night,” said the hermit, “I climbed to the top of that big rock above us. I could see the lights of the inn and hear a strain or two of the music when the wind was right. I imagined you moving gracefully in the arms of others to the dreamy music of the waltz amid the fragrance of flowers. Think how lonely I must have been!”
The youngest, handsomest, and poorest of the famous Trenholme sisters sighed.
“You haven’t quite hit it,” she said, plaintively. “I was moving gracefully at the arms of another. Mamma had one of her periodical attacks of rheumatism in both elbows and shoulders, and I had to rub them for an hour with that horrid old liniment. I hope you didn’t think that smelled like flowers. You know, there were some West Point boys and a yachtload of young men from the city at last evening’s weekly dance. I’ve known mamma to sit by an open window for three hours with one-half of her registering 85 degrees and the other half frostbitten, and never sneeze once. But just let a bunch of ineligibles come around where I am, and she’ll begin to swell at the knuckles and shriek with pain. And I have to take her to her room and rub her arms. To see mamma dressed you’d be surprised to know the number of square inches of surface there are to her arms. I think it must be delightful to be a hermit. That–cassock– gabardine, isn’t it?–that you wear is so becoming. Do you make it–or them–of course you must have changes- yourself? And what a blessed relief it must be to wear sandals instead of shoes! Think how we must suffer–no matter how small I buy my shoes they always pinch my toes. Oh, why can’t there be lady hermits, too!”
The beautifulest and most adolescent Trenholme sister extended two slender blue ankles that ended in two enormous blue-silk bows that almost concealed two fairy Oxfords, also of one of the forty-seven shades of blue. The hermit, as if impelled by a kind of reflex- telepathic action, drew his bare toes farther beneath his gunny- sacking.
“I have heard about the romance of your life,” said Miss Trenholme, softly. “They have it printed on the back of the menu card at the inn. Was she very beautiful and charming?”