The Kenosha telegraph. [volume] (Kenosha, Wis.) 1860-1888, 1884-05-09
JEANIE'S DIPLOMACY.
A sketch-with a Moral.

~ A Sketch-with Moral.
Everything looked grim, massive and
out of humor about the hard-featured
old homestead, Dark Ridge.
The somber walls, draped heavily, as
if in mourning, with the dark, writhing
ivy, were certainly grim-looking and
massive enough; and, if they were not,
in their way, out of humor, it is not in
the power of architectural physiognomy
to express ill-humor. If the grimness
of the exterior was austere, the grim
ness of the interior was morose. A
certain obdurate air of misanthropy
chung to everything. The heavy panels
of tho walls, the smoky holdings of the
ceilings, the deep carvings of the mas
sive furniture, seemed to the nervous
and imaginative little housekeeper like
so many wrinkles of one great implaca-
BILE frown.
In this lair lived and growled John
Eldritch, bachelor and landlord; eccen-
trio, irascible, reclusive. "Auld john
his neghbors called him, though he
was not old; and yet neither had he
ever seemed to be young. I'm his earli-
est boyhood he had been considered a
'Inaist unco' bairnie." His shock hair
did not bristle from the outside of his
Uranium with less regard to conven-
tional modes than his ''shock'' of quaint
notions bristled on the inside of it. This
fact and the rather more weighty one
that his manners sat as awkwardly and
loosely on him as did his awry garments
gave him no little repute as philoso-
pher. His philosophy was, however,
of very stern mold; ''pessimeestic, y
he termed it.
How John ever came into possession
OF his universal premise whatever is
ought not to be- do not know; but,
having once adopted the spectral wait,
he chung to it with an heroic obstinacy
quite inspiring.
The especial object of Johns abhor-
renee was the weaker sex. His antipathy
to anything and everything feminine
was fairly ecstatic.
THE feckless, bletherin' corbies,n
he would vociferate. ''They care for
naething but daffin and clatterin' |
wanna haze onything tae do Wi them. y
Wilma We, Johnp 'Bide wee.
Aud John was great rider. He
and his shaggy old road mare, ''Meg,''
were known far and wide; and great
was the merriment they afforded the
keen-witted peasantry on the line of
their expeditions, which often we're ex-
tended for days. For their JOURNEYS
were but one continued obstinate con
test for the mastership. But if there
was any doubt as to who was, de facto,
master (more politely mistress) it did
not exist in the minds of Meggy or the
lockers on. Whatever it occurred to
this erratic animal to do she did, in
spite of the railing invectives of her
irate but impotent rider. Did a clump
of grass on the hillside offer special en-
ticement--
Whoa! WHARF We gangin' moo, We auld
farran meerep"
But his mandate was as futile as his
ironY. Meg's nose was hillward, and
If John did not fancy being dragged
under the low-sweeping branches, his
only successful stratagem was to slip
of in the rear and await, with as good
Cor as ill) grace as possible, the pleas
ure OF his companion. Did a particu-
larly coy place by the roadside incline
Meg to rest, the celebrity with which the
staid philosopher slipped from his sad
die and the turbulent enthusiasm with
which he expostulated with his COM
placent partner, as she lay blinking
deprecatingly at her liege lord, oc-
casioned much suppressed laughter
among the unsympathetic observers.
III.
Nesting in one of the little olens
that creep out from the picturesque
and historic valley of the Tweed was
the quaint, retired homestead of Glen
Nook. Glen Nook was the peaceful
home of David Lester, former mer-
chant of Edinburgh, retired, by i'll
health, and his sister, "Jeanie" els
tor. "Davie was genial medita-
tive, gentle hammered man of, perhaps.
forty-five years. Jeanne was a very
small, very bright-witted, very placid,
very winning maid of some thirty sum-
mers. 1t seemed always to have been
summer with her.
At Glen Nook John and Meggy were
neither infrequent nor unwelcome visit
ors. To the mild-tempered Davie there
seemed something quite refreshing in
the aimless buster and acerbity OF his
friend.
And Jeanne? Yes; she liked him.
His treatment of her, indeed, was de-
signed to be a lofty and ungracious re-
serve, fitted, he thought, to impress her
duly with the ardor Of his misanthropv.
1t was not till many years afterward
that he learned how vigilant those
quiet eyes were; how they had watched
him when he sat at meals, smuggling.
the bits of bread into his sleeve, and
when afterward he sauntered, with a
grotesqIe air of unconcern, behind the
barn, how quickly they caught the
kindling (the moistening, she thought)
OF the eyes, as he heard the expectant
cries of the little nest of motherless
robins he had come to feed; and when
he sat, one day on the bank of brook,
trying to quiet the sobs of very dirty
and very ragged little urchin, whose
foot, torn by thorn, he had washed
and wrapped in his handkerchief, he
was startled by the breaking,of twig.
he thought it only some frightened
hare The step was very light, indeed,