The party took seats a little to the left and rear of the lecturer's
table, and faced the audience. The strange lady chatted gaily with the
other three, apparently as unconscious of the multitude of eyes fixed upon
her as the gazers were innocent of rude intent. There were pretty young
women in Plattville; Minnie Briscoe was the prettiest, and, as the local
glass of fashion reflected, "the stylishest"; but this girl was different,
somehow, in a way the critics were puzzled to discover--different, from
the sparkle of her eyes and the crown of her trim sailor hat, to the edge
of her snowy duck skirt.
Judd Bennett sighed a sigh that was heard in every corner of the room. As
everybody immediately turned to look at him, he got up and went out.
It had long been a jocose fiction of Mr. Martin, who was a widower of
thirty years' standing, that he and the gifted authoress by his side were
in a state of courtship. Now he bent his rugged head toward her to
whisper: "I never thought to see the day you'd have a rival in my
affections. Miss Seliny, but yonder looks like it. I reckon I'll have to
go up to Ben Tinkle's and buy that fancy vest he's had in stock this last
twelve year or more. Will you take me back when she's left the city again;
Miss Seliny?" he drawled. "I expect, maybe, Miss Sherwood is one of these
here summer girls. I've heard of 'em but I never see one before. You
better take warning and watch me--Fisbee won't have no clear field from
now on."
The stranger leaned across to speak to Miss Briscoe and her sleeve touched
the left shoulder of the old man with the patriarchal white beard. A
moment later he put his right hand to that shoulder and gently moved it up
and down with a caressing motion over the shabby black broadcloth her
garment had touched.
"Look at that old Fisbee!" exclaimed Mr. Martin, affecting indignation.
"Never be 'n half as spruced up and wide awake in all his life. He's
prob'ly got her to listen to him on the decorations of Nineveh--it's my
belief he was there when it was destroyed. Well, if I can't cut him out
we'll get our respected young friend of the 'Herald' to do it."
"Sh!" returned Miss Tibbs. "Here he is."
The seats upon the platform were all occupied, except the two foremost
ones in the centre (one on each side of a little table with a lamp, a
pitcher of ice-water, and a glass) reserved for the lecturer and the
gentleman who was to introduce him. Steps were audible in the hall, and
every one turned to watch the door, where the distinguished pair now made
their appearance in a hush of expectation over which the beating of the
fans alone prevailed. The Hon. Kedge Halloway was one of the gleaners of
the flesh-pots, himself, and he marched into the room unostentatiously
mopping his shining expanse of brow with a figured handkerchief. He was a
person of solemn appearance; a fat gold watch-chain which curved across
his ponderous front, adding mysteriously to his gravity. At his side
strolled a very tall, thin, rather stooping--though broad-shouldered--
rather shabby young man with a sallow, melancholy face and deep-set eyes
that looked tired. When they were seated, the orator looked over his
audience slowly and with an incomparable calm; then, as is always done, he
and the melancholy young man exchanged whispers for a few moments. After
this there was a pause, at the end of which the latter rose and announced
that it was his pleasure and his privilege to introduce, that evening, a
gentleman who needed no introduction to that assemblage. What citizen of
Carlow needed an introduction, asked the speaker, to the orator they had
applauded in the campaigns of the last twenty years, the statesman author
of the Halloway Bill, the most honored citizen of the neighboring and
flourishing county and city of Amo? And, the speaker would say, that if
there were one thing the citizens of Carlow could be held to envy the
citizens of Amo, it was the Honorable Kedge Halloway, the thinker, to
whose widely-known paper they were about to have the pleasure and
improvement of listening.