The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1882-03-13
SELECTED STORY.
[Harper's Bazar.
A Little ESthete.
BY HARRIET PRESCOTT spoFronD.


Aunt Euniee was certainly impracticable.
If you thought you had her here, up she
sprang like iack-in-the-box there, and you
never knew what to expect from one with
point of view differing from that of almost
all around her. There was, to be sure, one
thing you had a right to expect, and only
one. and that was always and everywhere of
late certain and complete disapprobation of
RosaIies proceedings--Rosa she had been
christened, but she had taken to spelling it
'sRosalys'' at the time she learned the Ken
sington stitch, subscribed to Punch for the
simple purpose of cutting her gowns, since
no dressmaker could do it, on the model of
those of Mr. Du Maurier's ladies there, and
dug up all her sweet brers and lemon-ver-
benas for the sake of planting whole beds of
sunfowers. 81 can't understand what it
means.p she moaned. 81 had my seeds
from the Agricultural Bureau in Washington
and planted pound of them, and there
have only two come up. | do believe--I do
believe And she looked at Joe as if what
she believed was that he pulled them up as
fast as they sprouted.
'Don't look at me, Rosa, said Cousin
Joe; s'look at the birds" And while they
are watching saucy robin tug at the stem
of one of the springing plants that he might
get the seed at its root, will tell you>tbat
Joe wasn't her cousin really: never allow
any of my heroines to be cousins: they were
step-cousns, so TO say, and by no means OF
any blood relation; but that had never hind
cred the warmest sort of Intimacy till Rosalys
began to spell her name in old text, and de-
clare she could see no absurdity in the young
aesthetics declaration that he dined off lily,
that it merely meant the satisfying sense of
beauty in which the banqueting of the soul
dulled the hunger of the body, and that Mr..
Riyas said the sense of color was something
quite as actual as the sense that enjoys
chop, and so maunder on till Aunt Eunice
put her fingers in her ears, and told Rosalys
if she didn't become quiet she should have
TO shake her. Upon which Rosalys would
walk off singing to herself from Oscar Wilde:
oHer gold hair fell on the wall of gold
Like the delicate gossamer tangles spun
On the FURNISHED disk of the marigold,
when s the gloom Of the Jealous night is DONE
And the spear of the lily is aureoled."
81 am worried about her." cried Aunt
Eunice SIS she really becoming an idiot?'
.sNot she, Aunt Eunicer' said Joe, laugh
ing. SIT takes world of sense TO make
that sort of idiocy."
sWell, she doesn't do useful thing any
longer, and she used to be invaluable. 1t is
all along of that painting fellow Rivas. Ever
since he and his moon-struck sister there
came back, she has been bewitched. I'll
give him piece of my mind!' And for the
time being that pleasant prospect impaired
comfort to Aunt Eunice.
sDo YOU really mean to go over to the
enemy, Rosa?" said Joe, overtaking the
pretty mink with his long stride presently.
ssHave you taken out your naturalization
papers in the feshly school? And do you
find pleasure in the thought of slipping over
our own graves as two snakes, or creeping
through hot jungles as two tigers? What is
the verse you read so often
" How my heart leaps up
To think of that grand living after death
In beast and bird and fower"
81 mean to do just as please, Joe,and to
let you do the same," was the tart reply.
ssIndeed you do not; for if you did, l should
take you so far away from all this nonsense
that you wouldn't know you We're on the
same planet But Rosa had gone without
any more words, and left him watching her
down the garden aisle, with her scant blue
robes clinging about her pretty feet, and her
scarf catching on every thorn, to where young
Rivas sat sketching on the old stone wall at
the garden foot, wearing his bicycle dress.
whose knee-breeches and jacket were per-
haps something as near the Old Florentine
as he dared to approach in these parallels.
Joe could not but acknowledge that the dark
young artist, 1.-THE and slender, and the sylph
hurrying under the arched pathway, with her
long unbraided brown hair streaming round
her and away in the wind, made pleasant
picture Yet it vexed him that it should be
made so by his Rosa, who six months ago
had been all but his wife, planning their
house and home with him, choosing their
chairs and sofas, Still bedeviled by this
medieval idiot and his sister," growled Joe.
Then a spasm of humility seized him, and
he didn't wonder she preferred the Italian
beauty of the youth to his own giant stature
and Saxon tints, the novelty of the one to the
long usage of the other. For all that it had
occurred to him that he might counteract
portion of the bedevilment by seeing if there
were anything in this sad sister Gladys; yet,
on the whole, he was too hurt and angry and
disguised to try, and he rubbed his short
yellow curls, and flashed his great gray eyes
at them, and strobe away gnawing his mus
tache, after one dismal glimpse OF Rosa
catching up the cinging skirts round those
pretty ankles of hers, to dance down the path
more trippingly, and waving her scarf with
her arm, the scarf whose cunning DISPOSE
ton was the nearest that she, in turn, dared
approach to angel sleeves.
Joe knew that the girl in the long sulphur
colored gown opening over olive green velvet
reading book as she walked with down.
cast head and face, was Gladys, and he knew
Just why she walked there, and that at this
moment his great figure cast shadow at
her feet, but he would none OIL her, and went
back for a little solace TO Aunt Eunice.
1T saw you," said the good but contrary
and old-fashoned soul, ssfrom the window.
And | saw that bilious-looking girl making
eyes at you. She looks like the lady in the
lobster. But don't you be troubled, Joe.
Only have patience, and it will all come
right Rosa isn't really fool yet. You go
right on furnishing your house as it nothing
had been said or done"
81 don't know that | want to" said Joe,
gloomily.
'sDon't know that you want top cried
Aunt Eunice. "Then there is really more
mischief done than l feared. Don't know
that you want to? Joe, if you don't want to
I'll sue you for breach of promise myself"
1t was a long summer to poor Joe. who
had expected by this to be revealing in an
ideal world of happiness, with charming
wife at Niagara in June, at Newport in July,
at the Crawford Notch in August, and in
September settling in their home in Boston
SUBURBS, the home that was 70 be nothing
but a nest of love and music and Joy and
goodness. And here was Rosa never let
ting him mention the subject, planting her
sunfowers over, and rescuing but two of
them from the birds again, going about with
her little thumb through palette patched in
dullest colors of old gold and dirty green,
or spending hours oyer her easel where an
ethereal pot of impossible lilies was trying
to put on-or off-semblance ofreality, drap-
ing old ironing blankets at her windows, and
talking of the ineffable dream Of dead light
blooming in the slumber of their tawny folds,