Miss Primrose: A Novel

Roy Gilson

Roy Rolfe Gilson

Miss Primrose: A Novel

PART I

A Devonshire Lad

I

LETITIA

All little, white-haired, smiling ladies remind me of Letitia – Letitia Primrose, whom you saw just now in a corner of our garden among the petunias. You thought her odd, no doubt, not knowing her as I or as the children do who find her dough-nuts sweet after school is done, or their English cousins, those little brown-feathered beggars waiting on winter mornings in the snow-drifts at her sill. As for myself, I must own to a certain kinship, as it were, not of blood but of propinquity, a long next-doorhood in our youth, a tenderer, nameless tie in after years, and always a fond partiality which began one day by our old green fence. There, on its Primrose side, it seems, she had parted the grape-vines, looking for fruit, and found instead —

"Why! whose little boy is this?"

Now, it happened to be Bertram, Jonathan Weatherby's little boy – it being a holiday, and two pickets off, and the Concords purple in a witchery of September sheen – though at first he could make no sign to her of his parentage, so surprised he was, and his mouth so crammed.

"Will I die?" he asked, when he had gulped down all but his tongue.

"Die!" she replied, laughing at his grave, round eyes and pinching his nearer cheek. "Do I look like an ogress?"

"No," he said; "but I've gone and swallowed 'em."

"The grapes?"

"No – yes – but I mean the pits," whereat she laughed so that his brow darkened.

"Well, a man did once."

"Did what?"

"Died – from swallowin' 'em."

"Who told you that?"

"Maggie did."

"And who is Maggie?"

"Why, you know Maggie. She's our hired girl."

"How many did you swallow?"

"Five."

"Five!"

"Or six, I guess. I'm not quite sure."

"What made you do it?"

"I didn't. You did."

"I made you swallow them?"

"Why, yes, 'cause, now, I had 'em in my mouth – "

"Six all at once!"

"Yes, and you went and scared me. I forgot to think."

"Mercy! I'm sorry, darling."

"My name isn't darling. It's Bertram."

"I'm sorry, Bertram."

"Oh, that's all right," he forgave her, cheerfully, "as long as I don't die like the man did; you'll know pretty soon, I guess."

"How shall I know?"

"Well, the man, he hollered. You could hear him 'cross lots, Maggie says. So, if you listen, why, pretty soon you'll know."

And it is due partly to the fact that Letitia Primrose, listening, heard no hollering across lots, that I am able here to record the very day and hour when I first met her; partly that, and partly because Letitia has a better memory than Jonathan Weatherby's little boy, for I do not remember the thing at all and must take her word for it.

She was not gray then, of course. It must have been a pink, sweet, merry face that peered at me through the grape-vines, and a ringing laugh in those days, and two plump fingers that pinched my cheek. Her hair was brown and hung in braids, she tells me. She may have been fourteen.

I do not remember her so young. I do remember hugging some one and being hugged, next door – once in the bay-window by the red geraniums, whose scent still bears to me some faint, sweet airs of summers gone. It was not a relative who hugged me; I know by the feeling – the remembered feeling – for I was dutiful but not o'er keen in the matter of kissing our kith and kin. No, it was some one who took me by surprise and rumpled me, some one who seemed, somehow, to have the right to me, though not by blood – some one too who was nearer my age than most of our relatives, who were not so young and round and luring as I recall them. It was some one kneeling, so that our heads were even. The carpet was red, I remember. I had run in from play, I suppose, and she was there, and I – I may have been irresistible in those days. At least I know it was not I, but Eve who —

That must have been Letitia. I have never asked, but it was not Cousin Julia, or the Potter girl, or Sammy's sister. Excluding the rest of the world, I infer Letitia. And why not kiss me? She kissed Sammy, that fat, little, pudding