A Book o' Nine Tales.

“My heart is thumping against my very boot-heels, Dolly,” she confided to her friend. “It’s no sort of use.”

“Are you going to give up?” demanded Dora curiously, and perhaps a little tauntingly.

“Give up!” cried Mistress Mork stoutly. “Do I ever give up? I’ll die first! But I do wish he wouldn’t get so many love games! It’s dreadfully discouraging.”

Granton was, in truth, having everything his own way. Howard, although a good player, had somehow lost his coolness, and was soon demoralized by a peculiar short, cutting service, of which his opponent had complete mastery, and which he was unable to return. His play became wild and uneven, and the contest was quickly decided against him.

The master of ceremonies came forward with the announcement that the prize racquet belonged to Mr. Nathaniel Granton, but that, according to the provisions of the tournament, any person had now a right to challenge the winner to play for the prize, by the best two games in three.

There was a rustle, and then a pause, as many eyes were turned toward George Snow, who had won in the Newport games the summer before. But that gentleman sat quiet in his place, a smile of amusement stealing over his comely features as Dora said, in the most tragic of whispers, —

“Oh, Betty, how can you?”

But Betty, her head thrown a trifle back, and the color flaming hotly into her face, rose with a charming mixture of dignity and shyness, and walked, before them all, straight up to the judges.

“I challenge the winner to a match,” she said, steadily enough, although she confided to Dora afterward that she felt as if every word had to be dragged out by main force. “I should like five minutes to change my dress.”

Granton uttered a low, sharp whistle, and doffed his cap.

“All right,” the master of ceremonies returned. “Be as quick as you can.”

“I’ll not keep you waiting long,” she assured him, and turned to beckon Dora to her.

As the two girls disappeared into the hotel, the bustle and chatter began again with renewed vigor, and swelled and buzzed in the liveliest fashion. Here was a genuine sensation for Maugus. Betty was too lovely and too great a favorite with the men wholly to escape the censure of the young ladies, who now had a string of pretty things to say of her boldness and presumption. But the gentlemen rallied to a man in her support, and, by the time she reappeared, public opinion, as represented by the spectators of the tournament, if not wholly in her favor, was so in outward expression.

She was dressed in a dark-blue jersey of silk, which fitted her in that perfect combination only possible with a faultless figure and an irreproachable jersey; and below that a skirt of navy-blue flannel fell in straight plaits to her ankles, where one caught, as she moved, occasional glimpses of a crimson stocking, the exact shade of her flat sash and of the close wing-tip in her trig little blue silk cap. There was nothing of the nature of tags and ends about her costume. Her hair was closely coiled, and even her ear-rings had been removed. The crimson handkerchief about her white throat was fastened into its place so securely as scarcely to be less smooth when the playing was over than when the first game began.

She was very sober, – so grave, indeed, that George went over to her just as she took her place, to say some absurd thing to make her laugh.

“Don’t be nervous,” he added, having succeeded in his object so far as to call a fleeting smile to her face. “And don’t look as if assisting at your own obsequies. You are all right, if you’ll only think so.”

“Will she do it?” Dora asked anxiously, as he took his seat again.

“I’m sure I don’t know,” he answered. “I’ve told her she will, and I hope so; but it isn’t going to be so easy.”

They talked of that tennis tournament for many a long day in Maugus. Opinion was divided at first as to the probable result. There was a quiet concentration in Betty’s manner which soon began to awake confidence in her ultimate success, although at first she lost. Even the most envious of the girls soon found themselves applauding every lucky hit she made; and Betty, whose senses were keenly alive that day, felt the stimulating consciousness that the general sympathy was with her. She threw her whole soul into her playing, every point she lost arousing her to new exertions.

“By Jove! Dora,” George said, “Granton’s bound to get a lesson. Betty’s blood is getting up. I’m convinced now that she’ll win, and I’ll bet you the gloves that she beats him a love set before she’s done.”

Dora was too excited to answer him. She hoped he might be right, but just now Betty was losing. She had been beaten three games out of five, and the present one, on Granton’s service, was going hard against her. Granton was harassing her with his short cut, which fell before her racquet reached it nearly every time.

“What’s got into her?” George muttered uneasily. “Ah, that was better. Good return.”

And he led the hand-clapping which greeted the difficult stroke by which Betty brought the score up to deuce. The game went against her, however, and soon after, the set.

“I’ll do it, George,” Betty said under her breath, as she passed him in changing courts. “Don’t be discouraged. The Mork blood is up.”

“It’s all on his cuts, Bet. Run up to them. Watch his service, and you can tell when they are coming. Nat could never serve a decent swift ball.”

Betty nodded and went on to her place.

“Play!” called Granton.

Watching him, his opponent noticed him throw his head back, and remembered his telling her that he always betrayed his cutting. She ran toward the net as the ball came down, and returned it like a cannonball.

“She’s got it!” cried Snow, with great glee, in his excitement calling so loudly that both the players heard him. “She’s all right now. Oh, that’s beautiful!”

Granton tried a couple of swift balls and faulted them both.

“Love; thirty,” called the scorer.

Another cut; again cleverly intercepted; then a fault and an easy, round-hand service.

“Love; game.”

The applause was really quite tremendous.

“They are all against me,” Granton observed to Betty, handing her the balls over the net and laughing rather ruefully. “Public opinion would be positively outraged if you should fail.”

“I’ve no intention of failing, thank you,” she returned, with spirit; and away she swept to her position. “Play!”

Granton was himself on his mettle, yet he did not play his best. He could not fully recover from his surprise at the style of his adversary’s play. The swiftness of her service and returns was so different from what was expected of a girl that he was scarcely on his guard against it up to the very end. He felt the sympathy of the spectators, too, to be against him, and this was not without its influence. He lost the set, and with it, by an unfortunate chance, his good nature.

“Sets, one all,” the scorer announced; and something in the saucy toss of Betty’s lovely head, as, flushed and panting, she stood talking with George and Dora, jarred upon her lover’s nerves with sudden irritation. An unreasonable madness took possession of him. How much was wounded vanity, it might not be easy to say; but under the circumstances, with all his mates grinning at his failure, it was not at all strange that his feelings were not wholly placid. His play in the third and decisive set became rash and excited. He lost his head a little, and before he fairly knew how it happened the score was called on Betty’s service: —

“Games; five, love”

“Good!” was George Snow’s comment. “I told you she’d beat a love set before she was done. – Oh, keep your head, Bet!”

Betty delivered a ball swift as a bullet and just clearing the net.

“Fifteen; love.”

A fault, and then another swift ball, which skimmed like a swallow over the net and struck the ground only to cling to it in a swift roll.

“Thirty; love.”

The next ball was beaten back and forth until Granton dashed it to the ground at Betty’s very feet.

“Thirty; fifteen.”

The excitement was at its height. Even those who did not appreciate the finer points of the play caught the interest and somehow understood pretty accurately how matters stood, and were as earnest as the rest. Small-talk was forgotten, heads were craned forward, and all eyes were fixed upon the players. Betty grasped her racquet by the extreme end of its handle, and held the ball as high above her head as she could reach.

“Play!”

She struck it with all her force.

“Forty; fifteen,” was the scorer’s call; and Nat Granton understood that only one stroke lay between him and defeat by a love set.

George Snow deliberately turned away his face.

“I never supposed I could be such a consummate fool,” he said afterward, “but I positively could not look at your last service, Bet. I felt as if the whole universe were at stake.”

As for the player, she was fairly pale with excitement; but her head was clear and her hand steady. She paused an instant, poising her racquet. She observed that Granton stood near the middle of his court. With a quick step she moved to the very outer corner of her own and sent a swift ball sharply under her opponent’s left hand.

“Game; love set,” called the scorer. “Sets two to one in favor of Miss Mork.”

And, amid what for Maugus was a really astonishing round of applause, Betty, flushed but triumphant, walked to the net to shake hands with her vanquished lover.

V

It was astonishing how humble and forgiving her victory made Mistress Betty. She was troubled with the fear that she had been unmaidenly, that she had hurt Granton’s feelings and alienated his friendship forever, with a dozen more scruples quite as absurd and irrational.

She escaped as quickly as possible from her friends and their congratulations, and hurried to her room on the pretext of dressing for supper. There she cooled her hot cheeks, burning with exercise and excitement, and looking ruefully at her image in the mirror, shook her head reproachfully at the counterfeit presentment as at one who had beguiled her into misdoing.

After supper she was sitting rather gloomily in a retired corner of the piazza, when the defeated Granton approached. The reaction from the afternoon’s excitement had rendered the young lady’s spirit rather subdued, but she rallied at sight of the new-comer.

“Good-evening,” he said. “Were you enjoying the sweets of victory?”

“I was enjoying the sweets of solitude,” she returned, a little pointedly.

Granton laughed.

“I suppose,” he remarked, taking a vacant chair near her, “that I need not apologize for my ill-judged remarks some time since about girls and tennis. My afternoon’s punishment ought to pass as a sufficient expiation.”

“Expiation is always a matter of feeling.”

“Oh, as to that, I felt I had enough, I assure you,” he laughed. “It may not be gallant to say so, but it was really horrible to be beaten out of my boots by a lady in broad daylight, in face of all Maugus assembled.”

Betty was silent. The remorseful feeling rose again in her breast. Granton spoke lightly enough, but she wondered if she had not humiliated him terribly. She played nervously with her fan, hardly knowing how to phrase it, yet longing to offer something in the way of apology.

“I hope,” she began, “I hope – ”

Nat regarded her closely in the fading light as she hesitated, and by some happy inspiration divined her softened mood. He noted the downcast eyes and troubled face. Without fully comprehending her mental state, he yet found courage to move a trifle nearer.

“Yes?” he queried, laying his fingers upon the arm of her chair.

Betty looked at the hand which had approached so near, and a sudden trepidation thrilled her. She opened and closed her fan nervously, but made no attempt to finish her broken sentence.

“Betty,” her lover said, leaning forward, “now I am in the dust at your feet, you must at least let me speak. You’ve kept out of my way so for the last two or three weeks that I was afraid you disliked me; but now I understand where you have been. You know how much I care for you.”

Still she did not raise her eyes.

“Don’t you care for me?” he pleaded. “I’ve been in love with you all summer. You must have known it.”

He paused again, yet she did not answer, though a great tide of joy thrilled her whole being. Her lover seized both her hands and bent down until his cheek almost touched hers.

“Will you marry me, Betty?”

All her wilfulness and sauciness flashed in her eyes as she lifted her glance at last to his and answered.

“I wouldn’t if I hadn’t beaten this afternoon.”

With which implied consent he seemed perfectly satisfied.

Interlude Third.
MRS. FRUFFLES IS AT HOME

In answer to the announcement that Mrs. Stephen Morgan Fruffles will, on the afternoon of January 27, be at home from four to seven, all the world – with the exception of her husband, who keeps significantly out of the house, and at his club finds such solace as is possible under the circumstances – has assembled to celebrate that rare and exciting event.

The parlors are thronged almost to suffocation; the air is warm, and laden with a hundred odors, which combine to make it well-nigh unbreathable; the constant babble of conversation goes on with the steady click-clack of a mill-wheel, and several hundred people persistently talk without saying anything whatever.

Mrs. Chumley Jones is there, in a most effective, costume of garnet plush, adorned with some sort of long-haired black fur. She is conscious of being perfectly well dressed, of being the best-known woman in the parlors, and most of all is she now, as always, conscious of being the one and only Mrs. Chumley Jones. Soothed and sustained by an unfaltering trust in all these good things, she moves slowly through the rooms, or stands at some convenient coign of vantage, dropping a word to this one and to that, with just the right differences of manner fitted to the degrees of the people whom she addresses.

“My dear Mrs. Fruffles,” she remarks to the hostess, “you do always have such enchanting receptions!”

“Oh, thank you, dear Mrs. Jones,” responds the other, fully aware what is expected of her; “I wish I could begin to have anything so charming as your Fridays.”

“Oh, so kind of you to say so,” murmurs Mrs. Jones, with the expressive shake of the head proper to the sentiment and the occasion.

Then she passes on to her duty elsewhere.

“How do you do, Mrs. Jones?” the voice of Ferdinand Maunder says at her side. “Isn’t it a lovely day? It is really like a Roman winter; don’t you think so?”

“Yes, it really is, Mr. Maunder.”

“Yes, that’s what I’ve been saying to myself all day.”

“It is so much nicer of you to say it to me.”

“Oh, Mrs. Jones, you are always so clever at turning things.”

They smile at each other with perfect and well-bred inanity for a second, and then Fred Lasceet slips in between them.

“How do you do, Mrs. Jones?”

“Oh, how do you do, Mr. Lasceet? It is ever so long since I have seen you.”

“So good of you to think it long. I am sure it seems an age to me.”

Mr. Maunder having meanwhile glided through the crowd with an eel-like elusiveness, Mrs. Chumley Jones is left with a remark upon which to form her conversation for the afternoon.

“We have had such a strange winter; don’t you think so, Mr. Lasceet? It is really like a Roman winter.”

“It really is; though I shouldn’t have thought of it. You are always so clever in thinking of things, Mrs. Jones.”

“You are a sad flatterer, Mr. Lasceet.”

Mr. Lasceet endeavors to look very sly and cunning, and while he gives his mind to this endeavor another slips into his place.

“How do you do, Mrs. Jones?” says Percival Drummond.

“Oh, how do you do, Mr. Drummond? I haven’t seen you for ever so long.”

Mr. Lasceet melts into the swaying background, and is seen no more.

“It really is not nice of you to say so, Mrs. Jones,” is Mr. Drummond’s response, “when I took you in to dinner at Mrs. Tiger’s night before last.”

“Oh, dear me; how stupid of me! I really fear I am losing my mind. It is the weather, I think. It is so like a Roman winter, don’t you think?”

“Yes, it is a little.”

“Oh, ever so much. How do you do, dear Mrs. Gray? I am delighted to see you. I was just saying to Mr. Drummond that it seems to me that our winter this year is so much like a Roman winter. Did you ever think of it?”

“Oh, my dear, I have thought of nothing else all winter. Why, it is just such a day as it was one afternoon two years ago when I was in Rome.”

“Were you in Rome year before last?” Mr. Drummond inquires, with the air of one to whom the answer of the question is of the most vital importance, although he asks only for the sake of being silent no longer.

“Yes, we went in October and stayed until March. You remember, Mrs. Jones, that we dined with you the very day before we sailed.”

“Why, yes, so you did. I had forgotten all about it. Are you going?”

“Yes, I really must go. I have three places more to call before I go home, and we are going out to dinner.”

“I shall see you if you dine at the Muchmen’s.”

“Oh, are you to be there? How lovely.”

“I hope to take one of you in,” Mr. Drummond says, with a smile of the most brilliant vacuity.

“Are you to be there, too? Why, it will be quite a reunion. Au revoir.”

The crowd swallows Mrs. Gray, and at the same moment Mr. Drummond is seized upon by a sharp-looking elderly female, who drags him off as if she were conveying him into some sly corner where she may devour him undisturbed. Mrs. Jones turns to move toward the other parlor.

At that moment she is accosted by a lady of an appearance so airy, both as regards dress and manner, as to suggest that she is a mislaid member of some ballet troupe.

“Why, how do you do?” she cried, with a vivacity quite in keeping with her appearance. “My dear Mrs. Jones, I haven’t seen you since I got back from Europe.”

“Why, Susie Throgmorton, is it really you? I didn’t know you were home.”

“That shows what an unimportant person I am.”

“Oh, I knew you came home from Europe, but I thought you were still in New York.”

“Oh, I only went on to see Aunt Dinah for a couple of days. I got caught in the most awful storm you ever saw.”

“But the winter,” Mrs. Chumley Jones observes, with an air of freshness and conviction which is something beautiful to see, “has been as mild as a Roman winter most of the time.”

“Yes, it has been like a Roman winter.”

The crowd separates them and they go their several ways, each repeating that it is like a Roman winter; but meanwhile the same observation is being scattered broadcast by Mr. Maunder, Mr. Lasceet, and Mr. Drummond, so that, although there are a good many people in the room, they are in a fair way of being all informed that the winter strongly resembles that of Rome; a statement which, if true, may be regarded as of the highest importance.

It is not until, entering the tea room, Mrs. Chumley Jones encounters Mrs. Quagget, who talks more rapidly than any other known woman, that she has anybody take the words out of her mouth; but before she can tell Mrs. Quagget that it is like a Roman winter, Mrs. Quagget has imparted that interesting information to her. It is all one, however, since something has been said by one of them; and Mrs. Chumley Jones is not in the least disconcerted. She still clings to the convenient remark, as she did not take the trouble to bring one with her, and this one suits her purpose admirably.

“My dear Miss Tarrart,” she exclaims, as she comes upon a wintry young lady of advanced stages of maturity, “how do you do? I haven’t seen you for an age.”

“Why, how do you do, Mrs. Jones?” is the response, delivered in a manner so emphatic as to convey the impression that the reason why Miss Tarrart is so odd-looking is because she has put so much energy into her greetings of her friends. “I am enchanted to see you. When do you go abroad? I am sure one might almost think they were abroad in this weather. It is so – ”

“Yes,” Mrs. Jones interposes, taking the words out of her mouth; “I was just saying to Mrs. Quagget that this is really quite like a Roman winter; don’t you think so?”

“Yes, it is,” Miss Tarrart answers, with the air of one who has been beaten by unfair means. “It is like a Roman winter.”

“Why don’t you come and see me, Miss Tarrart? It really is not kind of you to stay away so long.”

“I am coming very soon; and you must come and see me.”

“Oh, yes; I am coming. Do you know which way Mrs. Fruffles is? I really must go.”

“She is in the other room.”

“Well, good-bye, dear.”

“Good-bye.”

The two separate, each thinking how fast the other is growing old. Mrs. Chumley Jones, feeling that she has now done her whole duty, does not even take the trouble any more to tell people that the winter is like a Roman one. She merely makes her way to the hostess.

“Good-bye,” she says. “One always has such lovely times at your house, Mrs. Fruffles.”

“Oh, it is so kind of you to say so, when your Fridays are so much pleasanter.”

“It is so kind of you to say so, my dear Mrs. Fruffles; but I am sorry to say that I cannot agree with you.”

“It is the weather partly,” the hostess observes; “so many people have said to me this afternoon that it seems like a Roman winter.”

“Yes, I was just thinking of that very thing. Well, good-bye, my dear. Be sure and come in on Friday.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

“Good-bye.”

“Good-bye.”

And as far as Mrs. Chumley Jones is concerned, Mrs. Stephen Morgan Fruffles ceases to be “At Home.”