Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 25, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 8 March 1877 — A FAIRY TOOTH. [ARTICLE]

A FAIRY TOOTH.

“ Pretty little woman that, yonder, in the crimson silk and myrtle leaves. No, not exactly pretty, now that I look at her again,, but whfct my small pieces would call >&MngT Don't you think so ?” 7 ithiftk "her both pretty and cunning,” answered Robert Douglass, “and have thought so ever -since I first met her, which was exactly one year and three days ago, four o’clock this very afternoon.” j s ■- • • , ' “ She’s a friend .Of yours, then?” “ I hope . aro’% toy wife.’/ . For a moment George Earle was slightly discomfitted; then, turning to his old comrade and grasping him heartily by the hand, he said: “Let me congratulate you, my dear fellow. Having/just-♦rr}ved. from the otjiir end of the 4 haven't had time'to hear the news. I knew you intended matrimony —that bit of information floated as far as Japan—and I expected to meet you and your fiancee here atvquf oppaip’s’Uris evening; but somehow It M'tet struck md that you were married, nor that that young lady—” Wa> the Jianet’r,’’ laughed Douglass. 11 She does look rather youthful, but m realM“fhe iS‘W(Vto<l4weffiy; sa, you see, mere's only ten years’ difference in indict, Wafrenwrofe me a little qver a year ago,” said Earle, with some hesitation, “that you were engaged to Constance Howard.” ” Almost, hut not quite,thank Heaven! for she was Constance only in name, and threw me over for a French Count, who turned out to be a French nobody. However, WM heart withstood the strain and only cracked —it didn’t break; and at this present moment I feel that, instead of owibe her a grudge, I owe her a good tunu'whidh I shall pay with interest it evtgJl get the opportunity; for it was through her indirectly, and a tooth dithat I became acquainted with the ‘ little woman in crimson sHk .and myrtle ■ornate ra abOTtuancing, I n consent to gratify your curiosity, although after promising me in the days of put boyhood tp -ee groomsman, you weren’t to be found when 1 had that position to offer you. Are you engaged for any of the dances?” “ The fourth from this—a waltz,” replied his friend. “Well, meanwhile we’ll go to the smoking-room and have a Cigar, and I’ll narrate. But don't expect much of a story, or, you,’ll .be disappointed, tliqugh I doMilnk it was about the oddest way of forcing an'acquaidtance I ever heard of, and ten to one you’ll thjnk so too.” To the smoking-room they repaired, and as soon as the blue smoke was circling above their heads, Douglass began: “ One afternoon, just one year and three days hgo, which, you will perceive, by rem Sobering that this is St. Valentine’s Dav, 1877, rnuat have been the afternoon of Ifeb' 11, 187 S, 1 was hurrying along the street as fast as the snow and ice would let me—we’d had a heavy fall of snow the preceding night—toward the residence of Miss Constance Howard, and.had arrived within a few doors of the house, when I saw 'a small, plainly-dressed young woman cautiously descending the steps, and tbenras cautiously,, with eyes bent on tlie(gjouud, advancing in, njy direction. She wore no veil, aha as "she drew near to me I studied, her face with pleasure. It was such a bright, brbwn, honest, innooent face. “ Well, sir, I was looking so earnestly at this bright, brown, innocent face, and not minding toy steps at all, that I never saw, a lftrge lump of ice directly to, my pathway, and tumbling over it in the most awkward manner, was precipitated into tho very arms of. the small woman, my tall worn soft ones ever since—--Btrik,ing her full in the face and then bouncing off into the street. I regained my perpendicular ip time to hear a halfdistressed, hklf-Bharp little voice exclaim, ‘ Ofyjm/ tqpfh!’ and see a pair of peculiar gray eyes raised reproachfully to my face, as a pair of woolen-gloved hands wen£ up to a. pair, of. charming crimson lips. Before I could utter a word of apology and regret she had glided, elided, or skated away, and I stood looking like a fool, and wondering whether I'd better glide, slide, or skate after her, when I saw aqmPthipg'gUttoripg on thejcp at. my feet. I stooped and nipked it up—a faify tooth! aY<ou needn’t look, so horror-strick-en, Earle; itwasn’t a real one, of course. “ ’Tisn’t likely I could have struck the louDgcreature so violent a blow as to a tooth that had grown there out of It Was aialse one, but the tiniest I had evefYSen" lii my" life, false or real. I looked at it a momept, pflk it imp ipy pocket-book, tooft my hat froilrtilrtirchin who&afc been-. Witotly M then, the absurdity of the thing striking m,e, I laugbodJOtid. amt'JongiitaUl the pass-ers-by must have thought I had suddenly come into a large fortune. After I got through laughing, I recalled the face of the joung glfl, "pad the more, my fancy paintedit, the,more charming it grpw, until at last I had persuaded myself that, if niLihemfla. beautiful, it was certainly the most charming it had ever been my good'fortune to gaze uponfand the first question—not a wise one, I saw, when too late«htb*t I naked' Constance When she cameMowto into the parlor to receive me, w&s z “ t'Wlto |s the small woman who left this house a short time ago—brown 'as a gypsy, dark, arched eyebrows, nose retrouts, mogth like a baby’s, gray eyes, ’with* 4ue<fr look in them, and woolen gloves?’ “ ‘ Pray how long did you look at her?’ said Constance. ** * Two minutes,’ answered I.

“ • You saw a great deal in two minutes,’ she retorted, with a disagreeable laugh. * What a capital traveler and sight-seer you would make! You could rush through a gallery of paintings, for instance, and carry away as many in your mind’s eye as those unfortunates who, not possessing your extraordinary talent— ’ “ • Don’t chaff, that’s a good child’ I interrupted. ‘Who is she?’ “ • She,’ answered Constance, with a curl of her lip, * is a young person, one of my Aunt Fidelia’s favorites—by-the-bye, I’m not included among them,’ with a shrug of the shoulders and a grimace—- ‘ who comes here every afternoon, Sundays excepted, to teach my little sisters their A B C’s. And I think’ (narrowing her steel-blue eyes and wrinkling her white forehead! * she took a great liberty when she left this house by the door sacred to the family and their friends, and a still greater when she stopped long enough in your way to have her photograph taken.* “ Of course I said no more on the subject, but turned to some theme more congenial to the irate beauty, who, by-tiie-wsy, hadn’t raised herself in my estimation by her, to say the least of them, illnatured remarks about the poor little daily Fivernesa. To tell the truth, old fellow, d been suspecting for some time that my ‘lily maid,’as I used to call her in the first days of -my spooneyism, was not entirely free from blemish, and that only her hair, and not her heart, was bright and golden. “ That night I dreamed an old and withered hag, quite in the style of the Macbeth witches, came to my bedside, and with many strange imprecations and much shaking of a bony fist, demanded—a tooth . . “* It is our Queen’s,’ she said, ‘and woe to him who, having found it, refuses to restore it to its rightful owner.’ “* I don’t refuse to restore it to its rightful owner,’ I said with firmness; • I will give it into the mouth—l mean the hands—of the Queen herself, no other.’ “ ’ Dare you • defy me?’ shrieked the hag. ‘ Be-w-a-rel’ and, growling like a young thunder-storm, she disappeared. “ Well, sir, I did nothing but think about the brown-faced governess and the mite of a tooth all next day.and the next, and at last I determined to find out where she lived and send it back to her—anonymously, of course. It was such a ridiculous thing for a man to cany around with hjm. If it had been a handkerchief, or a glove, or a ribbon, or a flower—but it wasn’t. • V How to find out where she lived beoame the question, solved for me by sheer good luck that very evening} when I went to call on Constance. “ Miss Howard was not at home, but Mrs. Fairman (Aunt Fidelia) was, and had a message for me. “ ‘ The verjj thing!’ I exulted, as I entered the room, with outward composure and dignity. You remember Aunt Fidelia?” “ A slim, keen, blue-eyed, rather dramatic old lady, with ‘no nonsense about her,’ and a very decided way of speaktog?”* “ The same. ‘ Constance has - gone skating,’she said. ‘Her orders are that you follow her. I suppose you’ll obey them ?” “ • Can’t I stop and rest a few moments ?’ asked I. “The old lady smiled. ‘I haven’t the lightest objection,’ she said; ‘ on the contrary, I shall be glad to have you. I like J ou as well as I like any of them—peraps a little better. Have you any news ?’ “ My news was exhausted in five minutes, apparently not at all to the disapprobation of Aunt Fidelia, who, like most old ladies, delight much more in talking than in listening, and who, to five minutes more (I never could tell how she got there, but it was through no questions of mine), began to hold forth on the subject above all others I would have chosen —the nursery governess. “‘Such a dear little thing!’ she said, ‘ and so kind to her widowed mother! —a poor seamstress, unable, on account of her delicate health, to sew half the time. I can’t imagine what she would do if it were not for Daisy.’ And, do.you know, old fellow,” said Douglass, breaking off in his narrative to take a long whiff at his cigar, and send a fleecy ring flying upward, “ that if I had been asked to choose a name for her, that’s the very name I’d have chosen—Daisy. A bright, sturdy, constant, frank-facCd little flower, making pleasant the fields and meadows and road-sides. Are you smiling? Beg pardon—thought you were; and I didn’t wonder at it. Bob Douglass doing the poetical is rather rum. Let’s see—where was I ? ‘ The girl is the life and light of the humble place she calls her home, and, to the eyes of her mother, there is no sunshine like Daisy’s smile,’ said Aunt Fidelia; * and, apropos of that, let me tell you something odd that happened to Miss Russel a couple of days ago—unless you are sufficiently rested and wish to follow the skaters.’ “ ‘ I assure you, my dear madam, I am not sufficiently rested, and very much interested,’ I said. ‘ Pray go on.’ “ The old lady went on. ‘ Daisy has the loveliest tiny teeth in the world, but unfortunately last week she broke one of the front ones. Away goes the child to the dentist, and has what was left of it pulled out, and then home to her mother and smiles. “ Oh, dear! oh, dear!” cries the mother—who is, as I told you before, a weak, nervous thing—“ where is your tooth? and where, oh! where is your smile?” You see, the tooth, Mr. Douglass, had taken Daisy’s smile with it, and the poor girl didn’t look at all like Daisy. So the modest little thing, who hadn’t given a thought to her looks herself, seeing her mother’s distress, went directly back to the dentist, and begged him to tell her what to do. “Have a false one in its place,” said he; “but it will take some time to get up a permanence, and you say you must have something Immediately. The only thing we can do is to find a tooth and fasten it in with a bit of wax to serve as a temporaiy.” Easier said than done, Mr. Douglass. It took a long While—a whole afternoon, in fhotorto match Daisy’s pretty teeth; but at last it was dong, and the dear little daughter went home in the twilight, and smiled again at. her contented mother. Well, a day or two after, going from here, some stupid man slips on the ice, falls violently ogainst the child, his tall hat striking her straight to the mouth, and out flies the “temporary.” And now -Mrs. Russel is pining for sunshine again.’ “ ‘ Who was the man ?’ I asked. "‘Why, what a silly question!’ said Aunt Fidelia, sharply. ‘ How should I knew ? And as for Daisy; her near-sight-ed eyes didn’t rest on him an instant, and she couldn’t tell him from Adam. So, poor thing, after all her trouble, she’s lost the tooth. Can’t set another, because she isn’t able to recompense the man for the time it would take to find one, and is obliged to go about with her mouth shut. You needn’t, say how dreadful for a woman; I’ll say it for you.’ »• • The mother is a seamstress,’ said I;

* perhaps my mother, who is kindness itself, could help her to some work which would pay her well. Can you give me her address?’ “You’re a good boy,’ said the unsuspecting old soul; and scribbling it on one of her own cards, she gave it to me. ‘ And now I think you’d better go. Goodnight.’ “ The next day after my highly satisfactory interview with Mrs. Fairman was St. Valentine’s Day, and what I considered a happy thought flashed into my mind, and I instantly proceeded to put it into execution. I bought a pretty little tortoise-shell box, laid the tooth in it on a bed of white cottoa. to company with two or three small gold pieces to pay for the ‘ permanence;’ and wrapping the box in a sheet of rose-perfumed paper, on which I had written a verse or two —what a time I had trying to find rhymes to ‘ mouth’ and ‘ tooth’!—l sent it by one of our errand-boys, with strict injunctions not to answer any questions, te the residence of Miss Daisy Russel. Judge of my astonishment when, to less than an hour, the box, minus the tooth, but still containing the coins, was returned to me, with a note written in a hand which betrayed extreme agitation, and which read thus: “.‘Miss Russel thanks Mr. Douglass for his kindness, and, while retaining her own property, begs to return the verses and other things sent by mistake.’ “Imagine my feelings, my dear fellow. No, you can’t imagine them; it’s impossible. My cheeks, man as I am, actually burned with mortification. I came near flinging the money, or ‘ the other things, as she called it, out of the window; but, on second thoughts, pocketed it instead. “ How in the world had she found me out? No doubt she knew, through the Howard children, there was such a person, but in what manner had she discovered that the sender of the valentine and Robert Douglass were identical ? What should I do to pacify the little gipsy? how prove to her that what I had done had been done in thoughtless kindness? I made up my mind to call upon her. The affair could not be properly explained by letter. Embarrassing as an interview might prove, I must face the situation like a gentleman. And in half an' hour after the box was returned, I was ringing at the door of the house where dwelt Miss Daisy Russel. She opened the door herself, and peered curiously at me with her lovelv near-sighted eyes. It was evident she didn’t know me by sight. “ ‘ I would like to speak to you a moment, Miss Russel,’ I said. ‘I am Robert Douglass.’ “ Her brown cheek flamed like an autumn leaf with the light of the setting sun on it. She answered not a word, but led the way into a pleasant but rather circumscribed sitting-room. A ‘ I have come to beg your pardon,’ I began, as soon as the door closed us. ‘ I had no intention of wounding you —God forbid! I knew you found it hard struggling in this cold world, that you had a dear mother almost dependent upon you’ (her face softened a shade when I spoke of her mother), ‘ and I never dreamed “ ‘But the verses,’ she interrupted, raising her eyes and darting a look or reprosdi at me (by-t Mb-bye aid I tell you she had forgotten to send them with the •other things?’), ‘and Miss Howard? Oh, Mr. Douglass, it was cruel and unmanly of you!’ “‘Miss Howard and I are not on as friendly terms as formerly,’ I answered; which was true, as the Count had made his appearance at the skating party. “ ‘ Still, sir, I am only a poor teacher, and not in your circle at all, and they were too—too ’ And, by George! she burst into tears.” “ Were they ‘ too —too?’ ” asked Earle, with a smile. “ Oh, there was something about the happiness of the fairy tooth in being imprisoned in so lovely a prison as her fairy mouth, and some reference to a kiss—that’s all !” “ And quite enough,” said Earle, “ taking into consideration that you had never been introduced to the young lady.” “ Well, sir, when the little thing began to cry, I thought I should go wild. ‘ Miss Russel,’ I cried, ‘do—do forgive me! You know that on St. Valentine’s Day people are privileged to a little more—in fact, a great deal more extravagaqj and poetical language than on other days. And, upon my word and honor, I respect and esteem you with all my heart, and have admired you ever since the day I first beheld you—the day I came near knocking you down.’ “A smile beamed through her tears as she held out her hand ana said, ‘ That’s about thirty-six hours ago. But I’ll detain you no longer, Mr. Douglass. I believe you are sincere in what you say.’ “ ‘ And you forgive me?’ I asked. “‘ I forgive you Good-by.’ “ ‘ One moment more,’ I begged. ‘ Pray tell me before we part how you discovered I wrote the valentine.’ “She looked at mein great surprise. ‘ I have heard of you often from my pupils,’ she said, * and one day when we were out walking (hey pointed out to me the house in Which you live.’ “ ‘ Yes, my dear Miss Russel, but they knew nothing about the tooth, the box, or the verses.’ ‘I Still more surprised, she looked at me as she went to her desk and took from it the offending valentine, which in her anger and haste she had neglected toneturn, and handed it to me. “ By George! old fellow, in my absentminded way, I’d signed my name to it. There it was, bold and free—little flourish at the end of the last ‘ s,’ and all—?* Yours to command, Robert Douglass.’ ” Earle burst out laughing. “Just what might have been expected of the boy who came to school one morning with a tin pie-plate under his arm instead of his slate.” “So I did, by George! I’d nearly forgotten that,” said Douglass, joining in the laugh. 1 - Then throwing away the end of hfs cigar as the strains of a waltz reached them, he added, “ There’s your dance.” “ But the, end of the story?” “ You’ve heard the first* chapter. The second and last Is a very short one. Perhaps, not being entirely bereft of brains, you may have discovered that I was half In love with Miss Russel when I went to offer her an apology for trying to befriend her. Well, sir, I came away whoUj/ to love with her, and that in time she returned my passion may be inferred from the fact that we were married three days ago, on the anniversary of the day I found the fairy tooth—fairy in more senses than one, for it certainly enchanted me, and led me by force of that enchantment to where happiness and— But don’t wait another moment, my dear fellow. Off to your waltz, and when it’s over I’ll Introduce you to Mrs. Robert Douglass.” —Harpbr'e Weekly. —A man named A. Horn keeps a saloon in New York, a taking name for a saloonkeeper