Chapter 8. Dorman Plays Cupid - Page 2

Dorman!"

Dorman began to whine. He had never found his divinity in so unlovely a mood. "I want to go now! Dey are too hungry, Be'trice! Looey Sam is goin' to fry my fishes for dinner, to s'prise auntie. Come, Be'trice!"

"Why don't you go with the child, Beatrice? You grow more selfish every day." Mrs. Lansell could not endure selfishness--in others. "You know he will not give us any peace until you do."

Dorman instantly proceeded to make good his grandmother's prophecy, and wept so that one could hear him a mile.

"Oh, dear me! Be still, Dorman--your auntie has a headache. Well, get your rod, if you know where it is--which I doubt." Beatrice flounced out of the hammock and got her hat, one of those floppy white things, fluffed with thin, white stuff, till they look like nothing so much as a wisp of cloud, with ribbons to moor it to her head and keep it from sailing off to join its brothers in the sky.

Down by the creek, where the willows nodded to their own reflections in the still places, it was cool and sweet scented, and Beatrice forgot her grievances, and was not sorry she had come.

(It was at about this time that a tall young fellow, two miles down the coulee, put away his field glass and went off to saddle his horse.)

"Don't run ahead so, Dorman," Beatrice cautioned. To her had been given the doubtful honor of carrying the baking-powder can of grasshoppers. Even divinities must make themselves useful to man.

"Why, Be'trice?" Dorman swished his rod in unpleasant proximity to his divinity's head.

"Because, honey"--Beatrice dodged--"you might step on a snake, a rattlesnake, that would bite you."

"How would it bite, Be'trice?"

"With its teeth, of course; long, wicked teeth, with poison on them."

"I saw one when I was ridin' on a horse wis Uncle Dick. It kept windin' up till it was round, and it growled wis its tail, Be'trice. And Uncle Dick chased it, and nen it unwinded itself and creeped under a big rock. It didn't bite once--and I didn't see any teeth to it."

"Carry your rod still, Dorman. Are you trying to knock my hat off my head? Rattlesnakes have teeth, hon, whether you saw them or not. I saw a great, long one that day we thought you were lost. Mr. Cameron killed it with his rope. I'm sure it had teeth."

"Did it growl, Be'trice? Tell me how it went."

"Like this, hon." Beatrice parted her lips ever so little, and a snake buzzed at Dorman's feet. He gave a yell of terror, and backed ingloriously.

"You see, honey, if that had been really a snake, it would have bitten you. Never mind, dear--it was only I."

Dorman was some time believing this astonishing statement. "How did you growl by my feet, Be'trice?