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Outpost, or Dora Darling and Little Sunshine, a fiction by Jane Goodwin Austin |
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CHAPTER XX - A LETTER AND AN OFFER |
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_ IN the kitchen, Dora found Karl waiting for her; and, while she eat her supper with the healthy relish of a young and vigorous creature, she gave her cousin an account of all the circumstances attending her meeting with the little girl, whom she described again as a foreigner, and probably French. "And what's to be done with her, Dora?" asked the young man rather gravely, when she had finished. "Why, when she is well enough to tell who she is, and where she came from,--that is, if she can talk English at all,--we can return her to her friends; or, if they are not to be discovered, I will keep her myself. That is,"-and the young girl paused suddenly, the blood rushing to her face, as she added,--" that is, if you and Kitty are willing. It is your house, not mine; though I'm afraid I am apt to forget." Karl looked at her reproachfully. "When I brought you here, Dora Darling, I brought you home; and when my mother died, not yet a year ago, did she not bid us live together as brother and sisters, in love and harmony?" "Yes; but"-- "But what, Dora?" "I am afraid sometimes I behave too much as if it were my own house," faltered Dora. "And so it is your own house, just as it is my own and Kitty's own. Have either of us ever made you feel that there was any difference, or that you had less right here than we?" Dora made no reply; and, while Karl still waited for one the staircase-door opened softly, and Kitty appeared. "The child is fast asleep," said she: "so I thought I would come down and hear the letter." "What letter?" asked Karl a little impatiently. "Oh! I haven't told you. Here it is." And Dora drew from her pocket, and held toward him, a large white envelope, boldly directed to "Miss DORA DARLING, care of Capt. Charles Windsor" "That's nonsense. I have beaten my sword into a ploughshare now, and am only plain mister," said Capt. Karl, glancing at the direction. "Well, read the letter, do; I'm dying to hear it," said Kitty impatiently; and her brother, with an affectation of extreme haste, unfolded the thick, large sheet of note-paper and read aloud:-- "Having been requested to communicate with Miss Darling upon a matter of importance, Mr. Thomas Burroughs will do himself the honor of calling upon her, probably in the afternoon of Thursday, Aug. 25. "CINCINNATI, Aug. 20." "Thursday, 25th! Why, that is to-morrow!" exclaimed Karl, as he finished reading. "Dated Cincinnati, you see! It is some message from Mr. Brown. He lives about twenty miles from Cincinnati," said Kitty eagerly. "I don't think so. Why should Mr. Brown send a message when he writes to me so often?" replied Dora with simplicity. "I should think he did. I suppose you expected a letter this afternoon, and that was what made you so bent upon driving to town in all the heat." "It wasn't very hot, and you know we needed these things from the shop." "From the grocery-store, do you mean?" asked Kitty sharply. "Yes." "Why can't you talk as we do, then? You have been here long enough now, I should think." "Because she knows how to talk better, Miss Kit," said Karl good-humoredly. "Calling a shop a store is an Americanism, like calling a station-house a dépôt, or trousers pants." "Well, I thought we were Americans, Dora and all," retorted Kitty. "Mercy, child! don't let us plunge from philology into ethnology. I prefer to speculate upon Mr. Thomas Burroughs. Who is he? and what does he want of our Dora?" "To marry her, I suppose, or to ask her to marry Mr. Brown," snapped Kitty. "Perhaps he wants to ask my good word toward marrying you," suggested Dora, coloring deeply. "No such good luck as that, eh, Kitty?" said Karl with a laugh. "Good luck! I'm sure I'm in no hurry to be married; and, though I haven't had Dora's chances of seeing all sorts of men, I dare say I shall get as good a husband in the end," replied Kitty loftily. "But, contemplating for one moment the idea that it may not be an offer of marriage that Mr. Thomas Burroughs means by a 'matter of importance,' let us consider what else it can be," said Karl with a quizzical smile. "Perhaps he wants your ideas upon the campaign in Western Virginia, and a report of the general's real motives and intentions," suggested Dora gayly. "Perhaps he wants to engage his winter's butter; though I don't believe Dora is the one to ask about that," said Kitty. "Now, Kitty! I'm sure I made up the last, and you said it was as nice as you could do yourself." "Yes; but you turned all the buttermilk into the pig's pail instead of saving it for biscuits." "So I did. Well, as dear old Picter used to say, 'What's the use ob libin' if you've got trew larnin'?'" "O Dora! how can you, how can you!-you cruel, cruel girl, how can you speak of him!" cried Kitty in a passion of anger and grief; and, pushing back her chair so violently as to upset it, she rushed out of the room. "Oh, I am so sorry!" exclaimed Dora in great distress; and would have followed her, had not Karl held her back. "Don't go, dear; it will be of no use: she will not let you into her room. Poor Kitty! she loved her mother so passionately, and her nature is so intense! We must make great excuses, Dora, for our sister's little inequalities of temper: I think her great loss is at the bottom of all." Dora looked thoughtful, and presently said slowly, "I know it, Karl; but it does seem to me rather unjust that she should hate poor Pic's memory so bitterly even now. He did not know any more than I that he had small-pox when he came back that time from New York; and when Kitty told him that Aunt Lucy had taken it from him, and was very sick, he felt so badly, that I think it prevented his getting well." "O Dora, don't say that! Kitty could not have blamed him openly." "I don't know what she said; but, from that day, he grew worse, and died without being able to bid me good-by,--Pic, who brought me away from those cruel people, and cared for me as if I had been his child. O dear, dear old Pic!" She did not cry; she very seldom did: but she clasped her hands tightly together, and looked so white and wild, that Karl came to her, and, taking her in his arms, would have soothed and caressed her like a little child, had not she repulsed him. "Please not, dear Karl! I must bear my griefs alone for I am alone in all the world." It was the bitterest sentence Dora had ever spoken, and her cousin looked at her in dismay. "If Picter could have given the disease to me instead of to aunt, and he and I could have journeyed on together into another world as we had through this, and left your mother to Kitty and you!" continued Dora; while in her eyes, and about her white lips, quivered a passion of grief far beyond any tears,--far beyond, thank God! any grief that eyes and lips so young are often called to express. And as it rose and swelled in her girl heart, and shook her strong young soul, Dora uttered in one word all the bitterness of her orphaned life. "Mother!" cried she, and clinched her hands above the sharp pain that seemed to suffocate her, the pain we call heart-ache, and might sometimes more justly call heart-break. Karl looked at her, and his gay young face grew strong, and full of meaning. He folded her again in his arms, and said,-- "Dora, I had not meant to speak yet; but I cannot see you so, or hear you say such words. Do not you know, cousin, that there is nothing in all the world I love like you; and that, while I live, you can never be alone; and, while I have a home, you can never want one, or be other than its head and centre? Dora, marry me, and I will make you forget all other loves in the excess of mine." Dora allowed her head to droop upon his shoulder, and a sudden sense of peace and rest fell temptingly upon her spirit. "Dora, Dora Darling always, even when you are all my Dora!" whispered Karl; but Dora released herself from his arms, and stood upright. Her face was strong again now, although very white; and she said,-- "Thank you, cousin. You are good and kind, as you always have been, and I am glad you love me as I love you; but what else you have said we will forget. I am too young to think of such things, and you will not feel so to-morrow or next day. Be my brother, as you have been, and let me be sister to you and Kitty, as aunt told us. I wish I could make Kitty love me." The young man would have persisted; but Dora, gravely shaking her head, said,-- "Karl dear, you only distress me, and I want to be quiet. Do not speak of this again for at least another year, and then, perhaps, you will not want to." "But in a year I may, if I do want to?" asked Karl eagerly. "I don't want to say that; for I don't know that I should want you to then," said Dora, with such exquisite simplicity, that the young man laughed outright, and said,-- "But you don't know that you sha'n't, do you, darling Dorelle?" "I didn't say so." "No; but--Well, I won't insist; only I shall put down the date. Let me see: Aug. 24, isn't it?" He took out his note-book, wrote a few words, and, glancing at Dora with a suppressed smile, put it away again. Then, more seriously, he took her hand, saying,-- "Only remember one thing, Dora; and that is, whatever may come in the future, this house is your home as long as it is ours; and, while I live, there is always some one who loves you best of all God's creatures." _ |
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