His Landlady's Daughter

" Yes, Mr. McGovern, she is coming home to-morrow." "No? Keally - ah! I mean- exactly -yes!" "Ah, Mr. McGovern, if you only knew how I've toiled and slaved and pinched that that girlcould have an education ! I never had no learning myself." "Preoisely - just so." "And I made up my mind that Annie should be a lady, and she is, sir, she is ': " Certainly - no doubt . Really, the fact is - would you mind ?- I am very busy." JNow the fact was that Mr. McGovern was determined not to take the slightest interest in tho world in his landlady's daughter. And at this moment he was also engaged tipon a piece of work that not only absorbed a!l his energies, but apparently presented difficulties he was not likely to overeóme. The case lay just here. Mr. McGovern, salesman and commercial traveler for a large dry-goods house, had recently made the acquaintance in an adjacent town, not as large, but fancying itself quite as important, as New York, of a young lady who had suddenly inspired him with the exaggerated sentiment we commonly cal] love. At least he thought so. And now the problem lay, how to awaken a corresponding emotion in the heart of the fair being to whom he feit anxious and desirous to offer the devotion of a lifetime. If he had been rich he might have overwhelmed her with bouquets such as can only be produced by metropolitan florista. But he was not rich. On the other hand, if , as he expressed it to himseJf, he "had been one of those newspaper chaps, who are always saying things and writing things, you know, and walk into a girl's heart when they haven't even a respectable pair of boots, or a shilling to get their hair cut," even then he might have done something. But as it was, what could he do ? Finally an idea oceurred to him. Brilliant in epigram he was not, and certainly could never hope to be; but somebody had surely once said that "genius is only indomitable perseverance," and there was the hare and tortoise, and the busy bee, and there was no knowing but that if he gave a month to it he might yet manage to get up something she would like to read - he could certainly write as good a business letter as any fellow in the office. But then it ought to be in rhyme. And another difficulty presented itself. Her name was Arabella, and what on earth would rhyme with Arabella ? Yet Petrarch had certainly been in the same scrape; there isn't a word in the language that ends like Laura. But Petrarch wrote Italian. Ha ! Italian - that was the thing. -But then he didn't know Italian, neither did Arabella, and as for attempting to deny that fellows wrote poetry to their girls in English - oh, dear me ! no, that was too absurd. So he set valiantly at work, and on the morning when Mrs. Gibson invaded his sanctum to announce her daughter's expected return, he had got just this f ar: Midst roses fair, oh ! Iovely Arabella - Stop ! there was cellar. But how to work il in ? And here Mr. McGovern was met by a difficulty that hasoppressed many a greater poet. His landlady had broken the chain of inspiration; besides, it was 9 o'clock; he couldn't do better than go to the office, for there was a fresh consignment of goods that he was expected to dispose of. In the evening he would go out and cali upon Arabella; which ne did, and at midnight he returned to his grimy apartment on Mrs. Gibson's third floor, more in love than ever. But on the following evening, when he carne home from the office, he remembered Mrs. Gibson's announcement, and sft the tea table he looked for the young lady in question. Not that he cared what she looked like, but then - " Hum ! not a pretty girl by any means !" but, somehow, he looked again. There she sat, a soft little body in gray merino dress, with a pair of very pretty hands placidly folded in her lap. What was the impression she gave him ? Ha ! he didn't know. Now he had it; she seeined so very, very - funny word, wasn't it - clean, that was it. Perhaps it was the awful grime of Mrs. Gibson's front basement did it. Contrast is everytbing, you know. But ah ! she wasn't like the divine, the beautiful - "Mr. McGovern, will you have another cup of tea ? " My ! what a sweet voice ! Now what was it made the old boarding-house day by day so muen less intolerable than itused to be ? Perhaps it was the dust. Somehow the universal dust had oeased to assert itself as formerly, and became conspicuous by its absence. Everything in Mr. McG-overn's room by some magie got into its right place. Inanimate things may be totally depraved, but, somehow, his showed an evidence of reform that argued the existence of saving grace somewhere. Where on earth were the holes in his stockings ? He missed them. Certainly a hole in one's stockings is more honored in the breach than in the observance; but what a peculiar experience for a clerk in a boardng-house ! One day Mr. McGovern happened to remember what his landlady had said to him about her daughter's " edication." (Poor woman ! he didn't wonder some big words bothered her ; every uow and then he cnme across one that puzzledhim.) But he must get a safe subject. How would politics do ? Hcre he -was tolerably strong himself. It is a humiliating confession to make regarding one's hero, but no sooner had Clarence McGovern begun to talk politics with Annie than he speedily made up his niind that the adminintration of our republican Government was the oue thing on earth that he knew nothing about. How Immiliating it was ! The same thing over again. " If yon ain't a rich man or a newspaper chap, what can you do with a girl? Tney get their heads packed full of things at school that a f ello w who's got his living to earn can 't know any thing about, and if you haven't got any money - this world is a beastly hole ! '" concluded Olarence McGovern ; and in that statement he embodied the sentiments of many a wiser man. But in this case it was too bad. Now with Arabella, rich, beautiful, and wellborn, it was different ; but to be extinguished by Mrs. Gibson's daughter ! he, Clarence McGovern - abominable ! Was he not a rising; man, and were there not indications of good birth in his very features and in his very name ? To be sure, he hated to attempt tracing his lineage ; it would bolt up against a tailor's shop in the Bowery in such an aggravating matter. But clearly names sprang from soniething. Why should his ancestors be named McGovern if they never had any thing to govern ? - impossible ! But such a plebeian name as Gibson - bah ! And there was something very delightful in Annie's society when he kept out of deep waters; and when one day she asked him, very sweetly, "Whois Arabella ?" Mr. McGovern feit that his cup of happiness was full. With Arabella for a sweetheart, and Annie for a confidante, what man could want more ? The flood-gates of his soul were opened. He certainly lacked the eloquence of that much-to-be-envied newspaper chap; but Annie was sympathetic, and she got a notion of his longings, his doubts, his aspirations, quite as correct as if tney had been more elegantly expressed. Then carne the story of the sonnet that wouldn't allow itself to be written, and he stupid, uncontrollable, contumacious jehavior of that awful polysyllable Ara)ella. " Don't put it at the end of a line," suggested Annie. " Get over it at once and have it out of the way." " Capital !" said Mr. M'Govern. 'Could you, Miss Annie, give mo an dea, a suggestion, a line or two, pfiaps ?" " What style will you have it in ?" " Well, something a little like Tennyson, with a dash of Shelley,";just a triile of Swinburne possibly." He hadevilently been reading up. " How would this do?" suggested the accommodating Annie, with a twinkle n her eye that somehow made Mr. McGovern blush to the roots of his hair : " Arabella, gaze upon me With thy soft and gentle eyea, See the wrong that thou hast done me; All my troubled spirit lies Fainting with its deep emotion, Pulseless as a tropic ocean, And I seein aa one who lieth Low upon his couch and dieth." "Beautiful! Go on." Now the result of all this was that within the next three weeka Miss Arabella received no less than nineteen love poems, all signed " Clarence McGovern" in that gentleman's best style, with a flourish underneath at least i'our inches long. But somehow this partnership in poetry did not seem to agree with Annie, and before long she announced her intention to visit a friend in the country. She " needed a change," she said. Curiously now the holes in Mr. McGovern's stockings began to reappear ; the dust resumed its normal sway, and the ocly Une of poetry the young man could remember was Thou wilt come no more, gentle Annie, which he whistled so lugubriously that one morning, out of pure sympathy, Mrs. Gibson put her head inside the door and whispered, consolingly : "Lor' bless you, yes, she will, Mr. McGovern ; she's only gone for a month." Then Clarence began to wonder where liis thoughts had been straying ; and, as poetical effusions were no longer a posíibility, he resolved to see Arabella at once and put his fate to the touch, and win or lose it all. It was a night of wind and rain and sleet as Mr. McGovern left the station and approached the Lockwood mansion. Miss Arabella would see him in a lew moments, and in the meantime would he wait in the library ? Pancying himself in solitude, he selected the easiest chair, and was just composing his address to the fair object of his affections, when a snaall voice appealed to him pathetically : "Pleathe, thir, thith ith too thick, it won't twitht." "What is it, my child?" inquired Olarence, affectionately, seating the small petitioner on his kneo. "I'th makin' lighterth. Thithter Bella gave me all thith white paper. I wanted new but she thaid it wath good enough for me ; there wath nothing on it but some thilly vertheth that big fooi - she thaid hith name, but I forget - had written to her. Don't pinch me tho ; I'll thcream." O agonies of unrequited afl'ection ! There curgling gracefully around a lamplighter, destined perhaps to light some one of his rival's cigars, were the tender lines : " Arabella, gaze uüon me AVhy thy Boft and gentle eyes." The rest was gone, unless they might be discoveied on the vicious morsel of paper that " wouldn't twitht." In less than two minutes Mr. McGovern was in the street. Oh, the dismal, dreary, sleeting iniquity of that night ! Where was the station ? It had disappeared. Down in torrentscame the rain, freezing as it feil ; slippery, and more slippery, and more slippery grew the pavement ; only a cat or some animal with ciaws could have maintained a syste.matic perpendicular. Suddenly down went Mr. McGovern. JPerhaps it was a blessing, for the sudden application of cold ice to the back of his head restored his consciousness of where he was, and he turned toward the railway station, having in his excitement wandered half a mile in the opposite direction. Had that partial bath suddenly cooled his passion ? Clarence could not have told, but somehow he did not feel as miserable as he had expected, only very wet, and the ride home seemed interminably long. Two or three days passed by, and even yet Mr. McGovern was in a remarkably serene frame of mind for a disappointed lover. A week passed away, when euddenly he began to feel a serious distress in his left ankle. This struck him at once as peculiar, as, according to all precedent, the anguish should have prooeede direct from his heart. But pretty soou the invisible tweezers of a mostmalignantimp began to wrench liim in the kuee. Before long the grip was upon his arm ; thence it stuok to his hip; and, uttorly in the foower of the enemy, Mr. McGovem awoke one morning and found himself - not liko the Philistines, dead - but unable to move a limb, and helpless before the ejes oí Kitty, tlie waitress, who, latf in the morning, poked her head into the room and inquired if he was ever going to get up. " Get up ?" no ! Not for weeks upon weeks did Mr. McGovern rise from his bed. Tbey blistered him, they poulticed hini, they drugged him; but all to no effect. The f ever would have its own way in spite of the whole medical phar macopceia. Krat of all they placed him in charge of a monstrous male nurse, who Clarence, in his impotent fury, mentally denominated a ' ' great hulking brute," but without whose assistance the unfortunate victim of his attentions conld not even turn in bed. How he grew to bate the horrible creature who stood over him day and night ! Even Mrs. Gibson's creaking boots and high-pitched voice became a blessing when, in the intervals of her domestic labors, she looked in upon the sufferer. But Annie - if he could oniy have Annie ! Finally, in his semi-delirium he began to cali aloud for her; and Mrs. Gibson, whether out of the motherlmess of her own heart, or because she had her own ideas about Annie and this thriving young dry-goods salesman - too much cannot be expected of landladies with marriageable danghters - promised him that Annie should be sent' for. At last she came ; and whether the strength of the enemy was spent, or whether he did not dare apply the freezing, burning implements of torture in Annie's gentle presence, the devil of rheumatism was exoreised, and peace began to reign. Mr. McGovern began to fancy that he had elapsed in paradise, such was the glory of convalescence. And Annie was everywhere. Once more the dust disappeared, and Clarence himself witnessed the magical gestures through which it suffered annihilation; he also saw the very prooess by which all holes depart from a stocking, save the one by which the foot enters it. Annie's fair ÜDgers, that only wrote poetry under compulsión, seemed to luxuriate in the composition of broths and soups and jellies ; and never, thought the invalid, did they appear to such advantage as when playing round that provoking stop-cock with which they docked his rations of champagne. And then, while the fresh air of the springtime stole in through the flowers that Annie had placed in the window, and Mr. McGovern lolled upon the sofa in all the enjoyment of valetudinarian luxury, a great strife arose in his mind. He was thinking - of Annie ? No ; of Mrs. Gibson. Could he, could he? - the blood of the McGovern's ! But when Annie came onco more, and her little hands were busy around liie refractory pillows, he found he could ; and he did. " Annie, Annie, I love you." "And Arabella?" Tt was a cruel blow, and the spirit of the invalid was roused. Excitement began to gleam in the great hollow eyes, and he had just time to ejacufate, "Confound her!" when Annie's small hand was over bis mouth, and Annie's soft voice reiterated the doctor's injunction to "Jieep quiet." Then in a meek voice, "Say yes; won't you, Annie?" " I Jbaven't been asked anything." " Then put your arm under my head, and let me go to sleep. If you don't, 111 go into a rage and niake myself sick." Annie did as she was bid. Some two hours afterward, when Mr. McGovern condescended to awake, his flrst distinct articulation was, "And Annie, a-a-about your mother?" Annie withdrew her arm, and began to look severe. "Not a word abo t mother. There isn't such a cook in the uni verse." "No; that is true. " And sundry visions of the day when he had an appetite tegan to rise before Mr. McGovern's eyes. ' ' Annie, you are right. She shali live with us. " And Annie, who remembere;! what she had suffered for Arabella, replaced her arm, and, like a true womau, answered,