The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1882-03-13

sAn't-you can't" :.
expect to be considered Early English .
"Ohr' cried Rosa. sYou, Joep 1t is too
lit is too"
"Un-utter- said Joe, stalking off
just before Rosa began to cry. Rosa always
was a baby.
1--WE are all going into Boston this after
noon to matinee" said Emeline, who had,
to tell the truth, struggled in resisting an
inclination to turn her 1 into a y, but who
had come out victorious, and now looked on
her sister Rosalys and the two Rivases as a
perpetual entertainment, as she told Joe, in
urging him to have patience; for she was
sure the machinery was not strong enough
to hold the curtain up much longer
s'What do you thinkw she added, walking
back with Joe. "Aunt Eunice has been
reading it up in the English papers, and she
says she is determined to see the new play
PerseuerGnce-no, that isn't the word. 1t
isn't Pr0crdstindtion either, Oh, Patience
yes. They give it to-day, and she has had
the tickets bought; they are at Charles Of
flee, where we rendezvous, and we can all
be at home in time for tea And l rely on
you, Joe, to help me out, forI should't be
bit surprised to see Aunt Eunice on the
stage"
Pulling Saphir's hair, or tearing off
Grosvenor's lily. Yes I've seen Patience,
as well as tried It's perfect WOTk.
And, accordingly, as merry a crew as the
twenty love-sick maidens themselves were at
the doors of the Museum, where Patience
had begun its career, that warm autumn
afternoon, Joe grave, and supporting Aunt
Eunice, who looked like a queen about to do
Justice ON an heir-apparent, but Emeline
and Charles and John and Marion and Hal
and and the rest, all but Mr.. Rivas, full of
quivering excitement over the suppressed fun
seeing Rosalys and Gladys and their paint
ing chap put to the burlesque.
| don't remember that / ever saw anything
more. ludicrous than Aunt Eunice in the
first Gene of the love-sick maidens. She
evidently had not the faintest idea of bur-
lesque or satire; she had not supposed she
was going to melodrama. or one of the
light comedies of her youth, hardly having
been in theatre for twenty years. But
those dreary aamozels! "Why don't they
put their clothes on properly" she was
muttering; "and sew up their sleeves?
Love-sick maidens! Shameless hussies !
Talking in that fashion, To-day .he is not
Welt? And shouldn't think he would be
after eating butter with tablespoon
But when Mr.. Bunthorne made his appear
ance, my aunt began to writhe in her seat;
when he read his verses, she united her hat,
and threw the strings back violently; not a
smile disturbed the majestic contempt on
her countenance, and with the last words of
the song, "Why, what most particularly
pure young man this pure young man must
ber' she turned to me with a gasp,
and said "Tell me, tell me, am I going
crazy2 Or is the place really full of
people who come here to listen to
this abominable fool?' Vigorous nudges
on all the angles she presented, however,
brought Aunt Eunice to the recollection of
/, I, TAM
rarily, only to have it blaze up again at the
s'Willow waly o" of Grosvenor asking
Patience to marry him when he had seen her
but three minutes, as she hoarsely whisper
ed. What Aunt Eunice would have said if
she had waited to hear the duet of Reginald
and Lady Jane, "Sing Boob to you-pooh,
pooh to your and that's what shall say,'
whether she would have found anything
delightful and amusing in the attitude and
play of the three handsome young dragons
gotten up regardless of expense in the
Botticellian style, "perceptively intense, and
consummately UTTER" | don't know. For
when the lovely sunfower scene of the
travesty came, and Grosvenor dawned on us
again in his beauty, followed by his twenty
maidens with their archaic mandolins and
Tyres and zithers in hand, lovely little shapes
out of Fra Angelico's pictures, waving and
bowling and bending and turning and falling
in rhythmical circle about him. like so many
etherealized sunfowers, each yearning with
her face toward the god, Aunt Eunice rose
in her might, her bonnet falling into her
hand. "Come along" she said aloud
s'come along with me, every one OF you.
won't sit here another minute, and see
people gaping at fools that behave exactly as
our Resale does with that extraordinary fool
of Rivasr They might have heard her
all across the theatre. / don't know whether
they didiornot. For, If you will believe it, we
dared do nothing else than obey her; we
couldn't sit still after that, and we couldn't
let Aunt Eunice off alone in that Infatuated
state, and, one and all, we rose and went
after her, Emeline and Charles and John
and Marion and Joe and Hal and / and the
remainder, certainly affording spectacle of
as great fools as those upon the stage.
However, we knew we should see the play
again: and, for the rest of il, il was rather
fun to us; Aunt Eunice answered well
enough for our Lady Jane, and we had a
roaring farce all to ourselves, on the way
home, with our auips and jokes over Aunt
Eunices indignation-all but little Rosalie,
who sat rather pale and still though the up
roar, and reading her libretto quite studious-
ly.
Our hilarity supported US over the tea
table, and we separated to dress for the
fancy party, having overcome Aunt Eunice's
objections, when, just as closed my door,
l heard sudden little wall from the garden
under my window. Looking out through my
shutter / saw Rosa standing among the
weeds in her sunfower bed, her hands upon
her face, and crying bitterly. There were
no blossoms on those two sunfiower stems.
Joe went stalking over toward her. "Oh?'
she said, looking up, her face, lovelier than
l ever thought it was before, as one last ray
of sunlight played in the streaming tears
and the fading bushes and the shining azure
eyes, "would you have thought it? Rivas
has taken my sunfowers that he knew |
was nursing so. He is going to be Apollo,
aud he says they suit him so much better,
and he will wear them tonight, and paint
them tomorrow when they begin to droop.
he says, with the kisses of the-of the sun
god. And he picked them while was gone,
He-he stole them"
''Rivas be dashed.' | heard Joe say, or
something of the sort.
"And-and-oh, Joe, is it true? Have
you taken your passage for Melbourne? Oh,
Joe, aren't you going to take me with youY'
And out went the white arms to Joe.
But Joe was stoutly drawing back. II
don't know as / want to-" he said. And
then came such another little wall, and
Rosa had turned away, hiding her face in
the hollow of her pityful lifted elbows.
am strictly honorable person. scorn
eavesdropping. pulled down the shade. I
knew how it was all going to end after that
just as well as I did when l passed an arbor
in Gladys garden that night after almost
every one had been obliged to seek shelter
from the chilly dews, and saw the crumpled
Morning Star warmly folded ia the arms of
Guy of Warwick, whose helmet lifted off
showed a great head of yellow curls bending