From Jest to Earnest

DEDICATION.

This book is dedicated in fraternal affection to the friend of my youth and maturer years’the REV. A. MOSS MERWIN, who, with every avenue of earthly ambition open to him at home, and with every motive urged upon him to remain at home, has been for years, and is now, a faithful missionary in a foreign land.

CHAPTER I - A PRACTICAL JOKE.

The other young lady received but scant politeness, though seemingly in greater need of it. But the words of Scripture applied to her beautiful companion, "Whosoever hath, to him shall be given, and he shall have more abundance." She had been surfeited all her life with attention, and though she would certainly have felt its absence, as she would the loss of wealth, life-long familiarity with both led her to place no special value upon them.

Therefore during the half-hour's ride her spirits rose with the rapid motion, and even the leaden sky and winter's bleakness could not prevent the shifting landscape from being a source of pleasure to her city eyes, while the devotion of her admirer or lover was received as a matter of course.

"I wish we were there."

"Really, Bel, I sometimes think your veins are filled with water instead of blood. It's not cold to-day, is it, Mr. De Forrest?"

"Well, all I can say with certainty," he replied, "is that I have been in a glow for the last two hours. I thought it was chilly before that."

"You are near to 'glory' then," cried the boy saucily, from his perch on the driver's box.

"Of course I am," said Mr. De Forrest in a low tone, and leaning towards the maiden.

"You are both nearer being silly," she replied, pettishly. "Dan, behave yourself, and speak when you are spoken to."

"He joined you as much as he did me."

"O, pardon me; yes, I believe I was present."

"I hope I have failed in no act of politeness, Miss Bel," said De
Forrest, a little stiffly.

"I have no complaints to make. Indeed, I have fared well, considering that one is sometimes worse than a crowd."

"Nonsense!" said Lottie, petulantly; and the young man tried not to appear annoyed.

The sleigh now dashed in between rustic gate-posts composed of rough pillars of granite; and proceeding along an avenue that sometimes skirted a wooded ravine, and again wound through picturesque groupings of evergreens, they soon reached a mansion of considerable size, which bore evidence of greater age than is usual with the homes in our new world.

They had hardly crossed the threshold into the hall before they were hospitably welcomed by a widowed lady, whose hair was slightly tinged with gray, and by her eldest daughter.

Marchmont, the mistress of the mansion, had gratified her daughter's wish (as she did all her fancies) by permitting her to invite a number of young friends for the Christmas holidays. Both mother and daughter were fond of society, and it required no hospitable effort to welcome visitors at a season when a majority of their friends had fled from the dreariness of winter to city homes. Indeed, they regarded it as almost an honor that so prominent a belle as Charlotte Marsden had consented to spend a few weeks with them at a time when country life is at a large discount with the fashionable. They surmised that the presence of Mr. De Forrest, a distant relative of both Miss Marsden and themselves, would be agreeable to all concerned, and were not mistaken; and to Miss Lottie the presence of a few admirers’she would not entertain the idea that they were lovers’had become an ordinary necessity of life.

His love-making would equal his toilet in elegance. All would be delicately suggested by touch of hand or glance of eye, and yet he would keep pace with the wild and wayward beauty in as desperate a flirtation as she would permit.

Bel Parton, her companion, was another city cousin of the Marchmonts, with whom they were in the habit of exchanging visits. She was also an intimate of Lottie's, the two being drawn together by the mysterious affinity of opposites.

Lottie often half provoked but never roused her by saying: "Bel, you are the most negative creature I ever knew. Why don't you do something or be something out and out? Well, ''Tis an ill wind that blows nobody any good.' You make an excellent foil for me."